


Undercover: Peraltiago Stylez

by huffellepuff



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-13
Updated: 2015-08-23
Packaged: 2018-03-30 08:12:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 22,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3929467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huffellepuff/pseuds/huffellepuff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Amy's plan of ignoring and denying her feelings for Jake until they went away was going fine, thank you very much, until one day they get assigned an undercover case that could completely change her career - and their friendship.</p><p>(Not Johnny and Dora compliant - I started writing this before we had even heard that we were getting an undercover episode)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> As I said in the plot description, I began writing this a couple of months ago, before we even knew about the Johnny and Dora episode. This began as a 'this COULD potentially happen in the show' thing but now that I know we're getting fake dating in canon, I went all out. Inspiration picked back up last week with all of the Johnny and Dora theories flying around, and I wanted to get at least part posted before it's 100% canonballed. Hopefully I'll finish before the finale.

Amy Santiago excelled at everything she applied herself to. Sure, she sometimes had her “failures,” but it's not like she really _tried_ at the cooking part that one Thanksgiving. The presentation was perfect and that's what really counted anyway, since it's not like Captain Holt actually ate the food. And she _did_ learn to make better mouth, after all. Well, mostly. The point was, when Amy put forth effort, she was amazing. The one thing she just could not seem to succeed at was getting over Jake. So, after a few months of finding that the more she tried to stuff her feelings down, the more they grew, she decided it was time to change her approach. And denying, hiding, and avoiding her feelings? _That_ she was a master of.  
  
First, Amy managed to avoid much contact with him. She found that the less time she spent with him, the fewer opportunities she had to find new things about him that she was attracted to. It was honestly getting ridiculous how many things used to drive her up the wall that now made her want him more. So - less time with him, less attraction, easier denial. Keeping away from him also helped her avoid any conversations that might lead to the topic of “them” being brought up. Ever since the road trip last fall, Amy knew that talking about whatever had happened (was happening?) between them was a bad idea. Jake was with Sophia, and Amy needed to move on. Not working with Jake just made things easier.  
  
Eventually, Jake and Sophia broke up, but by then Amy was into the routine of it. Go to work, get herself assigned to cases with Rosa or Boyle, observe Captain Holt and find ways to improve her standing, restrict herself to small talk with Jake (and sometimes catch herself staring at him), go home, go to sleep, and too often dream about him. It wasn't exactly ideal, but it had become easy enough. She was also very quick to avoid eye contact when Boyle would accidentally refer to Jake's past feelings for her, which kept them out of any terribly awkward situations.  
  
Until one day, Jake acknowledged one of Boyle’s slip ups and made a joke about it. Amy felt shocked for a second, but was able to go with it. She wasn't _deeply_ in love with him (just… _shallowly_ in love with him, like a river or a lake, not an ocean or anything, ha. ha. ha.)  
  
Then they worked that case together at the wedding and it was wonderful. She didn't realize how much she _missed_ joking around with him. And as a bonus, any jokes about their… _whatever_ … helped it look like Amy was just as over the past as he was. She maybe kind of regretted making him dance with Gina's aunt instead of dancing with him herself after she saw the look on his face (he _was_ over his feelings for her, right?), but the moment passed and she just enjoyed watching their dance. Things weren't quite the way they were before she fell for him (stumbled, really), but it was getting better. He didn't know that she was still into him, they could work together, and it was fine. Amy was a master of outward denial and she had this thing under control.  
  
And then Captain Holt gave them a new assignment.

  


“Peralta, Santiago, in my office, now.” Captain Holt summoned them, with a sense of what Amy perceived as urgency, but it was still kind of hard to tell.  
  
“You both know of the string of unsolved burglaries that Detective Diaz has been working on, I assume.”  
  
“Ah, yes, the Newlywed Napper,” Jake proclaimed.  
  
“That makes it sound like they're stealing newlyweds, not their belongings,” Amy replied with a snort.  
  
“Fine, the Bridal Robber. The Brobber.”  
  
“Nope.”  
  
“Enough! I need to get you two up to speed quickly. As you know, the perpetrator has been robbing the homes of couples while they are on their honeymoons, then emptying their bank accounts. Detective Diaz has recently made a major breakthrough and discovered that all of these couples used the same wedding planner.”  
  
“THE PILFERING PLANNER!” Jake interrupted, high fiving Amy who responded on instinct.  
  
“The case will now be turned over to you two.”  
  
This surprised Amy. “Wait, why isn't Rosa going to stay on? She's not one to let a case go after she's put in so much work on it. We're not the Vulture, we don't want to take her case...”  
  
“The next part of the investigation is going to take a certain kind of finesse that I'm afraid Detective Diaz lacks. She's a very capable detective, but her acting skills need improvement. She was actually the one to suggest you two take over,” Holt told them, and Amy _could have sworn_ she saw the beginning of a smirk, as unlikely as that seemed. “We need you to go undercover. Nothing like Peralta's six month assignment; likely about a month.”  
  
“Yes!” Amy fistpumped before realizing what she was doing. She had been waiting years for an assignment this big, and was overwhelmed with excitement.  
  
“I'm in,” Jake said. “So, who are we going undercover as? Competing wedding planners, friends, officiators, or...” His face suddenly fell, and Amy was pretty sure the obvious hit him at the same time it hit her.  
  
“As a couple, of course. We will move you both into a safe house, which will be decorated appropriately, and you will hire Mr. Flowers as your wedding planner. It is essential that you get this right. If the NYPD cannot catch him soon, we will have to give the case over to the FBI.”  
  
Jake and Amy exchanged worried glances before Jake put on a big grin and stood up.  
  
“Let's do it, Peraltiago style!” He began walking out of the office, but quickly turned around. “And by do it, I mean solve this case. And Peraltiago is our ship name, Gina told me, get it?”  
  
Holt and Amy stared at Jake as he walked out.  
  
“What on earth do watercraft have to do with the two of you?” Holt asked in confusion.  
  
“I have no idea, sir,” Amy responded. What she did know, though, was that she was screwed.


	2. Chapter 2

As Amy packed her clothes and toiletries for the month ahead, she tried to create a game plan. Spending a month straight with Jake didn't mean she had to spend the _whole_ time with him. She just had to do some wedding planning and investigating. The rest of the time she could just hide in her room or something. It would be fine.  
  
When she arrived at the house, she realized that it would not be fine.  
  
“Jake!” She called from the upstairs bedroom – the _only_ bedroom. “Have you noticed any issues with this house?”  
  
“No, I certainly haven't--, it's freaking awesome! Apparently they seized it in a gigglepig bust and the perp's grandmother was the one who owned it. She was so mad at her grandson that she donated the house to the NYPD so he couldn't get it! There are, like, ten video game systems in the living room, and the toilet _can talk_. It's the fanciest bathroom I've ever seen.”  
  
Amy came downstairs and stared at Jake in disbelief.  
  
“There's only one bedroom.” She gestured between the two of them. “What do we do about that?”  
  
“Ah, yeah, I noticed that, and I asked the Cap'n,” Jake said, avoiding eye contact. “He said one of the reasons it was essential that we go full on undercover and live together was that Flowers – I still can't believe that's his real name, I mean, really, a wedding planner named Flowers? Anyway, he markets himself as this brilliant, all-encompassing wedding magician who gets super into your personal life and creates the perfect wedding based on the couple. So he goes on dates with you, sees you in the home, all that.”  
  
“Oh, that's...great. Okay, so, just the one room here. Should we alternate who sleeps on the couch?” Amy was not looking forward to the inevitable backache, no matter how nice the couch looked, but reminded herself that it was worth it. An undercover case like this would definitely help her rise to the top.  
  
“About that...” Jake put on strained grin. “The creep installs cameras while he does the home visits. None of his clients knew about this part beforehand, of course, but they were always found at the crime scenes. We're not quite sure about the purpose of them yet, though we hope it's just about surveillance to make sure the home really is empty before he goes in.”  
  
“Ew.” Amy wrinkled her nose in disgust. “How skeevy.”  
  
“Yeah. What it does mean, though, is that we kind of have to. Um. Act like a couple when we're here too.”  
  
Amy's eyes widened in a way that she was certain would be a comical sight at any other moment.  
  
“Just sharing a bed!” Jake quickly added. “We can be a totally boring couple that doesn't do anything in the bedroom but sleep. We just can't look like a couple that hate each other a month before their wedding. Pretty sure we could sue the NYPD if they expected anything else.”  
  
“Okay. Well. I'm going to go unpack upstairs then and just...bye.” She turned her back to him and practically ran away.  
  
This was all kinds of not good. This wasn't just not good, this was bad. This was probably a disaster. Her career depended on her being able to actually _deal_ with her feelings for Jake, because as successful as her avoidance-and-denial plan had gone so far, it would be impossible here.  
  
She needed to get her head on straight. There would be no more falling for Jake Peralta, only moving past those feelings and on with her career. Antonio Flowers was going down.

  


The first night wasn't so bad. Jake volunteered to sleep on the couch for the time being, since Flowers hadn't been to their home yet and therefore they weren't being watched. Amy was able to sleep well enough, the combination of relief at the sleeping arrangements and emotional exhaustion having settled in for the night. The next morning, though, her sense of relief faded as she saw Jake sitting at the table in only boxers and a t-shirt. She had seem him in much more revealing clothes before (the speedo back in his anti-Holt rebellion days came to mind), but the context made a difference. This felt a lot more personal.  
  
“Morning, Peralta,” she said, avoiding eye contact as she walked to the kitchen for some coffee.  
  
“Come on, Amy, I'm not Peralta here, I'm Butkis. And soon, you will be too!” He grinned at her.  
  
“ _Butkis_? _That_ is the name you chose? I knew Holt should've chosen our names.” She shook her head in disbelief.  
  
“Well, you get to be boring old Amy Garcia until we get fake married.”  
  
“Wonderful.” Amy joined Jake at the table and sighed. “So, where should we start?”  
  
“First, we need to look the part. Here's your engagement ring.” Jake shoved a small velvet box across the table and began towards the bedroom.  
  
Amy looked down at the box with determination.  
  
“And what you're wearing should be fine.” He looked back at her with smile, before adding in a rushed but sincere tone, “You look nice.”  
  
“Oh, um, thanks,” she replied, hating herself a little for checking him out as he walked away. She took a deep breath and tried to talk herself into work mode. This was a kick-ass case, and she could totally do this. Things had been getting easier between them for awhile now, at least as far as appearances were concerned. Jake was over his thing for her and Amy was terrific at acting like she was over him as well. They'd been able to work together and even have fun again, and this case would be no different. Just...a little longer and a little more personal, that's all.  
  
Amy put on the ring Jake had given her, and got ready to go meet Flowers.

  


 

They arrived at Flowers' office five minutes before their appointment, and were greeted by the man himself before they were even all the way into the waiting room.  
  
“You must be the Butkises!” Antonio Flowers greeted them with garish enthusiasm.  
  
“Jake Butkis the fourth, nice to meet you!” Jake shook Flowers' hand, then slipped an arm around Amy's waist, pulling her close. She felt herself tense up at his touch, and hoped Flowers didn’t notice. “And this is my beautiful fiancee, Amy Garcia. We're here to plan a wedding!”  
  
“Of course! I normally do not take clients so last minute, with only a month until your wedding date, but when I heard your circumstances I knew I had to help. Now if you're ready to get started, just follow me and we can discuss the process!”  
  
As Flowers led them into his office, Jake kept his arm tight around Amy's waist. Despite her initial reaction, she found herself relaxing into the hold. It was...nice.  
  
“What circumstances is he talking about?” she whispered.  
  
“We're filthy rich and willing to pay whatever it costs to have him as our wedding planner,” he whispered back. She tried to bring her focus back to the case, and away from how ridiculous she felt about reacting to the feeling of Jake’s breath on her neck, even when he was talking about a greedy criminal.  
  
“Please, have a seat.” Flowers gestured to a loveseat as he sat behind his desk. “As I am sure you have heard, I provide a wedding planning experience that no one else can top. I create the most personalized weddings possible by getting to know the couple as thoroughly as I can. Part of that will involve what you tell me, of course, but the rest I learn by observation. I am sure you have heard about my methods. We will begin the process tomorrow. For now, please, tell me about yourselves.”  
  
“Well, I met my poopsie bear here only a few months ago, but we've spent just about every moment since together. It was love at first sight,” Jake said, hugging her close and kissing the top of her head. Amy closed her eyes and sank further into Jake's side instinctively, glad that the action was at least in character. “We were on a cruise, we both love to go on cruises, and she was singing karaoke and she was just the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I introduced myself, we sang ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart,’ and the rest is history.”  
  
Amy felt torn between rolling her eyes at the story and gazing fondly at Jake for being so undeniably, well, _Jake_. Pushing aside the small sense of panic she felt over how comfortable she was _cuddling_ with him, she quickly picked up where he left off. Even with all that happened between them, they made a great team, and they were in their element doing undercover improvisation.  
  
“Before I met shnookums, my life was that song. I was falling apart, but now I'm falling in love. There's light in my life again.” Amy gave Jake her sappiest grin, and was pleased to see a genuine look of glee on his face at how much she was willing to play along.  
  
Flowers continued to question them about their relationship, as well as their personal histories, for the next five hours. By the time he sent them home, Amy was beginning to feel like she knew more about Amy Garcia than she did about herself.  
  
“Was that ridiculous or what?” Jake began as they got into the car. “This guy can't be for real. I mean, I know he for sure is a thief and that's his main game, but he does actually plan the weddings first. This information can't be how he does it though. How on earth is my first pet's name and my favorite childhood food relevant to a wedding?”  
  
“Um, Jake. Like a third of the information he asked for is the kind of thing banks ask about in security questions. At least we know how he gained access to their bank accounts.” Amy sighed. “I think we did pretty damn well in there, though. Garcia and Butkis are pretty well in sync.”  
  
“Yeah, they are.” Jake smiled at her, causing the butterflies in Amy’s stomach to flap their traitorous wings.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they were settled in at home, they contacted Holt to brief him on what they had found so far. Then, takeout at hand (Amy may have been undercover in a domestic setting, but that did not give her any magical abilities to cook), they spent the rest of the night planning exactly what they would be doing while Flowers was observing them. Their cover story had them both down as independently wealthy, so they didn't need to work. Amy found it very distressing to hear about that before she realized that this whole thing was technically her job, so she would be working _all_ of the time.  
  
By 11pm, their serious planning turned into repeated fits of giggles over absurd ideas about their fake relationship. (“What if we wear matching outfits every Tuesday, in honor of the day we met, OR EVEN BETTER, WE DRESS LIKE THE TOTAL ECLIPSE OF THE HEART VIDEO INSTEAD.”) Amy was fairly certain that she’d had more fun today than she had in the last year, which was awful to realize but at least wonderful to experience. She had to admit that she had really missed Jake.  
  
“Okay, I think it's probably time we hit the hay,” Jake said. “We’ve got to meet Flowers in Manhattan at 9 tomorrow, and we've clearly gone insane for the night. It's off to the lumpy hide-a-bed I go.” He stood up and stretched, his shirt riding up enough for Amy to see that he apparently took Holt's advice last year about the manscaping. She blushed at the thought, but didn't look away. “Night Ames.”  
  
Amy decided to bite the bullet before she could change her mind.  
  
“Hey, Jake...we're gonna have to do this bed sharing thing starting tomorrow anyway. No need to give you extra back pain. Plus, if he does totally creep on us once he installs the cameras, it'll probably be more convincing if we look like we've shared a bed before. Time to rip off the awkward bandaid.” She tried to arrange her face in something resembling a casual expression.  
  
“Are you sure?” He hesitated before adding, “I mean, I'm totally cool with it and you're right that we'll have to soon anyway, but I can handle the hide-a-bed for one more night.”  
  
“Yeah, I'm sure. It'll be fine. I'll see you upstairs in a minute.” She shooed him away and hoped she sounded more convincing to him than she did to herself.

  


By the time Amy went upstairs, Jake was already in bed playing Kwazy Cupcakes on his phone.  
  
“I saw your charger and your granny glasses on the other bedside table, so I assumed it was safe to choose this side,” he said.  
  
“Good call. I'm gonna get ready for bed real quick and then we can...well, sleep,” she finished lamely, going into the bathroom to change into the most modest pajamas she had been able to find.  
  
“Good lord,” he said as she emerged from the bathroom. “Where on earth did you manage to find Jane Austen's nightgown?”  
  
“Target.” Amy shrugged, happy that her clothing choice had had the intended effect – mockery was comfortable, even if the nightgown wasn't.  
  
“Very nice.” His laughter was cut short when she sat down on the bed, the full awkwardness of the moment settling in on them both. “Anyway. Lights out I guess!”  
  
Amy had never felt more aware of her body than she did in that moment. Her foot made contact with his leg as she got under the covers, and they both jerked away from each other.  
  
“CrapI'msorry!” she said in a rush.  
  
“No, it's okay. We actually should probably talk about the whole thing where we don't have a whole lot of control over our bodies while we sleep, and that anyone sharing a bed is going to bump into each other now and then.” Jake said, and Amy could feel him shrug behind her. “Totes normal.”  
  
“Good point. We're supposed to look like a couple anyway. _Some_ physical contact is necessary if we're gonna be convincing,” Amy said, instinctively turning onto her side and facing Jake. She worked to control her breathing and not give away that this was all a little bit too much, that seeing his face only a few inches away from hers was doing things to her heart rate. And the way he was looking at her - that was entirely unfair.  
  
“Night, Ames,” he said quietly, swallowing hard before breaking eye contact and rolling over to turn out the light.  
  
“Good night,” Amy squeaked out, before rolling over and away from him. 

  


At some point during the night, Amy woke to find that Jake’s body was pressed against hers, his breathing steady against her neck. She felt warm, safe, and comfortable, and was too tired to pretend otherwise. She snuggled in closer to him before falling back to sleep.


	4. Chapter 4

The following morning, Amy woke up to the sound of a large thump.  
  
“Goddammitshitow,” Jake groaned from the floor.  
  
“Oh my god, are you okay?” Amy sat up quickly and peered over the edge of the bed.  
  
Jake’s face reddened as he made eye contact with her and shifted awkwardly. Her concern quickly turned into embarrassment when she noticed the tenting in his pajama pants.  
  
“Oh,” she said, turning away and getting out of bed. “That, I mean, it’s normal and, I, um, don’t...no need to worry about it, it basically happens to all guys when they sleep, we talked last night about not having control when you sleep, it’s, um…”  
  
“I just didn’t want you to wake up and…” he trailed off. “So, I turned over and miscalculated a bit and now here I am on the floor.”  
  
“Really, Jake, I know it has nothing to do with me.” Amy sighed and turned back towards him. “It happened, I’m sure it’ll happen again, and it’s a good thing we are professionals and we’ve known each other as long as we have because I’m sure we can get past the awkwardness of human biology. No worries.”  
  
“All very true,” he said as he stood up, slowly regaining his composure. “Okay. Good. We can just ignore my penis, then. I’m just gonna grab some clothes and change downstairs.”  
  
“Sounds like a plan, Stan!” she said in a rush, grimacing as soon as the words were out of her mouth. Jake smirked at her and chuckled before leaving the room.  
  
“Oh, god,” she sighed. She began getting ready for the day, trying to decide what was the most appropriate thing to wear for a supervised date with your fake fiancé. Settling on a floral dress she was secretly excited to wear (she rarely let herself out in something so girly, a long term side effect of growing up with so many brothers), she flopped back onto the bed.  
  
_We can just ignore my penis._ He had to say it like that, of course - even in this kind of situation Jake never shied away from talking about these things for long. The problem was, Amy thought, it would be far easier said than done. She couldn’t help but dwell on what had just happened and think about how often this was bound to occur over the next 28 days. The worst thing about it? Most of her was dreading it, but a small part was kind of...intrigued by the possibility. Which made the dread even worse, because dammit she needed to stay in control of herself. Her feelings for Jake and his (possibly, but probably not, still existent) feelings for her were not worth risking their friendship and careers. 

  


When Amy arrived downstairs, Jake was putting out plates of scrambled eggs and toast.  
  
“Oh, you cooked for us?” she asked with confusion. “I figured we’d get bagels on the way or something.”  
  
“Eggs and toast hardly qualifies as cooking, Amy.” He shrugged. “And, you know, my mom had to work a lot when I was growing up, so I ended up doing most of the cooking for us.”  
  
“I never knew that about you. I guess I always assumed you lived off of cocoa puffs and take-out.” She grinned at him. “It’s sweet that you cooked for your mom. And me, thank you.”  
  
“You’re welcome,” he said, returning her grin. “Now, let’s dig in so we can go catch a bad guy!”  
  
They ate in silence, and Amy found herself staring at him as he checked Gina’s Twitter account on his phone (“I don’t know how she does it, but if I miss a tweet, she always knows and she won’t talk to me for like a week.”). It was almost odd how the moment upstairs seemed not to matter now that it was over and they could sit across from each other so comfortably. It was still in the back of Amy’s mind, of course, but mostly it was just… easy to be around Jake. Technically, they’ve eaten their breakfasts with each other more days than not over the last couple of years, just usually at their desks. Somehow the domesticity of sitting at a dining room table with food that didn’t come from a street cart felt almost the same.  
  
Jake looked up and caught Amy’s eye. She panicked briefly, thinking he would tease her about catching her staring, but he merely smiled at her and looked back down at his phone. She felt her breath catch in her throat and she looked away. This was getting ridiculous, the way he had an effect on her even when he was _eating eggs_. Trying to look at the bright side, she reasoned that this could potentially help them with their case. If she kept looking at Jake like that, there was no way Flowers could doubt she was in love.  
  
In fact, maybe it was all for the better. This whole pretending not to have feelings for Jake thing had been exhausting, and pretending not to have feelings for him while pretending to have feelings for him was a bit too much. Maybe she should just...go with it. Any expression of her romantic feelings could be easily written off as necessary for the case, so she never had to acknowledge that they _meant_ something. It would sell them as a more convincing couple, and Amy could probably do better work if she wasn’t so focused on not letting her emotions in. After it was all done, well… for once, she was not going to plan that far ahead. This could be a career changing case, and she needed to give it her all.

  


They discussed case logistics on the way to Flowers’ Manhattan office, where he asked to meet them for their date, and Amy felt strangely calm about her resolve to go all in on this undercover thing. She decided to tell Jake about her plan - the part about acting as couplish as possible, not the “because I’m in love with you anyway and tired of trying to hide it” part.  
  
“So… you want us to act like a couple at all times?” Jake asked with uncertainty. “Like, starting right now, even with no one watching us?”  
  
“Yes,” Amy said resolutely. “As it is, we seem pretty able to get into the couple behaviors in front of Flowers, but it takes a moment. And the stakes are way too high with this case for us to mess it up because he catches us out of character. A little method acting could help make our careers.”  
  
“And it will be far more likely for him to notice things once the cameras are in…” His face broke out into the goofy grin that she loved so much. “Okay, I’m in. We got this, Mrs. Butkis-to-be!”  
  
“I still can’t believe I fell in love with a Butkis.” Amy shook her head in faux sadness, before bursting out in laughter. They could totally do this.


	5. Chapter 5

“Mr. Butkis! Ms. Garcia! How pleasant to see you!” Flowers greeted them as they entered his office. “Are you ready for a magical day?”  
  
“We sure are!” Amy looped her arm through Jake’s and giggled.  
  
Jake looked down at her with a bit of surprise and a lot of fondness, then turned back to Flowers.  
  
“Yes indeed, we can’t wait,” he said. “So, what have you got for us?”  
  
“First, I will join you as you shop for your registry. Perhaps not the most obvious date choice, but trust me on this. Second, you will have lunch at a restaurant of your choosing, where I will be seated near you. And for the finale, a carriage ride in Central Park! You will ride alone inside the carriage, of course, and I will be behind in the footman’s spot, observing primarily your physicality.” Flowers beamed at them.  
  
“Our… physicality?” Amy stuttered out, suddenly questioning their commitment to the plan.  
  
“Yes, yes. It sounds quite awkward at first, I know, but I assure you that you will hardly know I am there. All of the couples I have worked with have adjusted quite quickly, and it is such an integral part of my process,” Flowers simpered.  
  
“Come on, babe,” Jake turned towards Amy and tucked some hair behind her ear, sending a shiver down her spine, “we’ve heard such amazing things about Mr. Flowers here, we have to at least _try_ his methods.”  
  
“Okay, sweetie.” She looked him in the eyes and smiled, focused on the warmth from his hand still on her face. “Of course we’ll try.”  
  
“See!” Flowers clapped his hands, startling the ‘couple’ out of their moment. “It’s already like you’ve forgotten I’m here, just _look_ at how enamored you are! You are very lucky to have found each other.”  
  
“Yeah, we are.” Jake said, finding Amy’s hand and giving it a squeeze. 

 

From Flowers’ office, they had taken a Town Car that he had provided. When they arrived at the fanciest department store Amy had ever been to, Flowers led them to the Home and Gifts floor.  
  
“Just take this with you as you shop, and scan what you’d like. I will follow along,” Flowers said as he handed them the gift scanner.  
  
“Even the scanner looks like it costs more than my car,” Jake whispered to her, as they began walking through the store.  
  
“It probably does,” she whispered back, taking his free hand in hers.  
  
Their first stop was the kitchen department.  
  
“Well, honey bunny, I know we’ll need new kitchenware. Your culinary skills far outshine our current assortment,” he said with a wink.  
  
“Oh, monkeybutt, you are too kind.” She swung their hands towards him in a sharp hit. “You think too highly of my cooking.”  
  
Jake winced, then led them to a display of can openers with various jewels in the handles.  
  
“We need this.” He handed her one with diamonds set into the handle. “Honestly, who would want a can opener that was worth any less than $3000?”  
  
“Good question,” she replied, scanning the barcode on the useless item. She walked next to a display of various china patterns. “And oh my goodness, we need this for our wedding china. The orchis italica is such a beautiful flower pattern.”  
  
He barely managed to stifle a snort as she handed him the display plate with the well-endowed flowers on it.  
  
“Indeed, these are lovely. We can’t store them in a cabinet, though - that would be a dick move. These are too beautiful to hide. We can display them on the wall, as long as we make sure they’re _well hung_.” He grinned at her as she shook with laughter.  
  
They wandered the store, cracking jokes about the many off the wall and overpriced items they found. Amy was surprised at how easy it was to let her guard down completely around Jake, something she never let herself do at work. But if they were “dating,” well, she didn’t need to keep that edge of professionalism. She felt happier, less tense, and even funnier when she was with him. It just felt _right_ to be walking around a department store, competing for who could find the most absurd gifts. Even with a creepy wedding planner-slash-criminal following them.  
  
After registering for a full Noah’s ark set of decanters (“Both lions are males, how progressive!”), spiked throw pillows (“These would come in handy in our bedroom, wouldn’t they Jake?” - he might have tripped and nearly knocked over the display after that), a toaster that printed an image of toast on your toast (“In case anyone needs clarification?”), a crystal sculpture of aviator glasses (“That. Is. So. Cool.”), a vase in the shape of a woman’s head (“... is that Meg Ryan?”), and more ridiculous things than she had ever imagined possible, they returned their scanner to Flowers. He sent them away as he finished the registry process for them.  
  
“Holy shit, Ames, who knew looking at pretentious garbage could be so much fun,” Jake said, bumping his shoulder against hers.  
  
“I now know how the 1% live, and oh my god, I kind of wish I could unsee it.” Amy laughed.  
  
“So! Did you notice anything strange or incriminating about Flowers’ behavior in there?” he asked.  
  
“Other than how creepy it is to be followed around a store? No, not really.” She frowned.  
  
“Me either.” He shrugged. “So where are we going to go for lunch?”  
  
“After all of that, somewhere normal please,” she replied, “Plus the department does actually have to pay for this part, not act like other people are going to buy this for us.”  
  
“Hello lovebirds!” Flowers greeted them as he exited the store. “Have you decided where we shall dine?”  
  
“Pizza,” they replied in unison, grinning at each other with surprise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case you're not super familiar with plant names, the orchis italica is also known as the "naked hanging man flower" for [obvious reasons](http://imwm.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/Orchis-italica.jpg).


	6. Chapter 6

They decided on the first pizza place they could find that didn’t cause Flowers to automatically recoil in horror. It was $40 for a basic pie, but Amy supposed it could be worse.  
  
The waiter seated them in a fairly private corner booth, though the purpose of it was defeated by Flowers monitoring them from one table away.  
  
“So I guess now we just… talk about date stuff?” Amy asked awkwardly. She knew that without Flowers listening in, the would probably be talking about the case and things at work. But it suddenly felt difficult to think of conversation that Garcia and Butkis would have.  
  
“I’m sure we’ll forget we’re being listened to soon, so for now let’s talk about the wedding. Always appropriate!” Jake said. “Who from your gargantuan family are you planning on inviting, my dear?”  
  
“Well, darling, we will of course invite my parents and all of my brothers, as well as their wives and husbands. Except Cynthia, she is not welcome at, um, Garcia family weddings anymore,” she said, eyes widening at the memory.  
  
“What did she do?” he asked with glee.  
  
“Let’s just say that the priest’s eyebrows have yet to grow back.” She shrugged, taking a sip of her water.  
  
“That must make for some awkward family dinners,” he laughed.  
  
“You have no idea. With seven brothers, five spouses, and twelve kids, Thanksgiving and Christmas are chaos. Just you wait until you’re part of one of those dinners.” She smiled, picturing Jake seated at a Santiago family dinner.  
  
“I can’t wait.” He placed his hand on hers on top of the table, giving it a gentle squeeze.  
  
Amy’s breath hitched. Somehow this moment of hand holding felt different than the casual touches from earlier in the day. She wanted to savor the moment, but reality broke in as she had the realization that Jake wouldn’t actually be attending any such family gatherings. The Butkises could plan all they wanted, but there would be no taking Peralta home to meet the family. She pulled her hand away and used it to tuck her hair behind her ears.  
  
“Ames, are you okay?” Jake looked concerned, and she quickly placed a forced smile on her face.  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” she said a little too brightly. “What about your family? Who do you expect will be coming?”  
  
“My mother, of course. I’ll probably invite my dad because I feel like I should, but I doubt he’ll show and that’s okay.” He shrugged, and Amy was relieved to see that he seemed to really mean it. “And you know, my sister Gina is probably going to try to be the flower girl.”  
  
“She’ll have to fight my nieces for it, and let me tell you, the 12-year-old might just be able to take her.” She laughed, the tension in her chest easing a little.  
  
“If we’re not careful, there could be a dance-off going down.” He grinned as he began dancing in the booth.  
  
“Oh, and your brother Charles, my god. He’ll be your best man, won’t he?” She grinned back at him.  
  
“Definitely. And I guarantee you he will throw the worst bachelor party ever,” he said.  
  
“You’ll probably have some kind of goat intestine as an appetizer.” Amy wrinkled her nose, which Jake promptly reached over and tapped with his finger.  
  
“Did you really just boop my nose?” she asked, laughing.  
  
“It couldn’t be helped. You wrinkle your nose that cutely, it requires booping.”  
  
“Well if you’re going to boop my nose, I’m going to boop yours.” She reached across the table towards his nose, but was interrupted by the waitress arriving with their pizza.  
  
“Excuse me, so sorry for the interruption,” the waitress said as she placed the pie on the table. “Can I get you anything else?”  
  
“No, thank you.” Jake said politely, as Amy stifled her giggles at being caught doing something so childish.  
  
“Noice one,” he teased her.  
  
“You started it.” She stuck her tongue out at him.  
  
“Solid comeback.” He reached for a piece of pizza and took a bite, a look of disappointment settling on his face.  
  
“Is it that bad?” She asked, grabbing a slice tentatively.  
  
“I can’t even taste the grease,” he sighed quietly. “What kind of pizza is this? This is supposed to be New York, isn’t it?”  
  
In the end, they still managed to put away almost the entire disappointing pizza. They went back and forth between talking about slightly altered versions of their real lives and making up stories about the lives of Butkis and Garcia. About the time she discovered that Jake Butkis was an Olympic swimmer in his early twenties, the wait staff began giving them the stink eye indicating that their table needed to be cleared for new customers (and probably ones who didn’t insult the food).  
  
As they approached Flowers’ table, he stood up and instructed them to wait outside for the carriage while he “finished business” inside.  
  
“What business could he have to finish? We paid our check already. Maybe he wants receipts, though I don’t think the information on them could possibly be useful.” Amy looked back towards the restaurant, biting her lip.  
  
Jake had been staring at her mouth, and as Amy released her lip from between her teeth, his eyes shot up to meet hers.  
  
“Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe he’s going to talk to the wait staff about us?” He shrugged. “Honestly, I get how it goes at the end - and I know we’ll get there, we’ll find his cameras, catch him in the act, something - but everything leading up to it seems _so_ elaborate just to steal people’s money.”  
  
“I think he might really enjoy this part of it. Either because he’s voyeuristic, or because he really enjoys making couples happy and this is just… his really weird method.”  
  
“Yeah, making couples happy before he steals everything they own.”  
  
“So maybe the one thing he likes more than those couples’ happiness is himself.”  
  
Just then, Flowers exited the pizzeria.  
  
“You two are so delightful, I hope you know. It’s been such a pleasure to work with you so far!” Flowers smiled in a way that made Amy profoundly uncomfortable. “However, I noticed that you two seem to avoid physical intimacy for more than brief moments. I know that it is awkward when you remember that you have someone observing, but please, trust that I do this only to help gain of a sense of couple and put together a wedding that best reflects the two of you. I hope that it is merely an adjustment thing, and that there is no larger problem with you...”  
  
She glanced at Jake with wide eyes and they nodded to each other. Despite the “all in” plan they had made that morning, they weren’t quite bringing their “one month from being married” couple game enough to be fully believed, and that had to change. She tried to focus on the here and now, and no future except the rewards bringing in a case this big could bring. And in the here and now, she was being encouraged to be more physically intimate with Jacob Peralta. She could handle that, even if it really would only be acting on his part. She braced herself and turned towards Flowers.  
  
“We’re both just really shy about PDAs.” She shrugged. “I’m sure we’ll be more comfortable when we’re not sitting in a restaurant booth or in a store.”  
  
“Great! Well, let us walk; your carriage awaits!” Flowers said, leading them towards Central park.

 

Ten minutes later, they were in the carriage attempting to get comfortable. As Amy was trying to figure what people even do during carriage rides, since she had never been on one herself, Jake wrapped his arm around her shoulders. Unlike yesterday, she gave no feeble resistance to the contact, and simply sank into the embrace and snuggled closer. He placed a kiss on top of her head and lingered with his lips pressed to her hair. She could feel the warmth of his breath, and a sense of contentment washed over her. Somehow, Flowers was right, and she barely cared that he was right behind them. They sat that way for a few moments before he lifted his head and spoke.  
  
“Hey, Ames, have you ever been on one of these rides?” he asked.  
  
“Actually, no,” she replied, wondering where he was going with the question, “Why?”  
  
“I’ve done this a few times and never really enjoyed it much,” he began, “but right now, I get the appeal. I think some things are just better with the right partner.”  
  
“I’m glad to be your partner, Jake,” she said, tilting her head up to look at him.  
  
She took a deep breath, reminding herself that he was saying it for show. Using the word “partner” felt a little bit loaded to her, but it made sense in a romantic context as well. A good relationship, which Butkis and Garcia apparently have, should be a partnership after all. She rested her head back on his shoulder, looking out at the sunshine in the park, and he kissed her hair again. This time, though, he didn’t rest there. He began pressing kisses from the top of her hair, down towards her face. He placed his palm along her cheek and guided her face so she was looking up at him again. His lips continued onto her face and she felt like she could hardly breathe, until he stopped just short of her mouth.  
  
Amy let out a sharp breath, and his eyes met hers with a question. Even in this situation when they had clearly agreed they would need to act like a couple, he asked permission, and she loved him for that. Heart racing, she gave him a tiny nod, and their lips finally met. Though she would never admit it to anyone, she had thought about kissing Jake Peralta _a lot_. In her daydreams, it was always a little bit desperate - the tension would get to be too much, and one of them would press the other against the wall in the evidence lock-up, mouths hungrily exploring each other. This kiss was nothing like what she had imagined. It was gentle and tentative and seemed so much more intimate and dangerous than the wild abandon of her fantasies.  
  
After a few moments, she parted her lips, and Jake quickly responded in kind. He tasted like the after dinner mints from the restaurant, and something else - something that was simply _Jake_ , and it was wonderful. She ran a hand through his curls, which were softer than she had imagined, and pulled him deeper into the kiss. His hands ended up everywhere - down her arms, through her hair, over her hips. It was passionate and careful and everything she didn’t know she needed.  
  
The carriage began to slow and Amy’s senses started to return. She slowly pulled away, but Jake continued pressing gentle kisses against her lips. Putting a finger to his lips to stop him, she rested her forehead against his. They sat there like that, breathing hard and hands still on each other, as the carriage came to a full stop. Amy pulled completely away and sat up.  
  
“So, um, whoa.” Jake stared at her, looking a little shellshocked. “That was…”  
  
“Yeah…” she quietly replied.  
  
A knock on the carriage door startled them out of their moment, and Amy turned to open the door.  
  
“I told you it would all work out.” Flowers grinned at the two.  
  
She immediately felt embarrassed when she remembered the audience, and worse when she realized that the audience was the whole point. What might have been the most amazing kiss of her life was all about a case, not about her. And worse yet, she knew she would be going back for more.


	7. Chapter 7

Thankfully, the walk back to the Town Car was short, and Jake and Amy were spared trying to figure out how to talk about what had just happened in front of Flowers by Flowers himself. As they got into the car, Flowers between them, he began to tell them what he had “discerned” about them so far.  
  
“I am so excited to be working with such a unique couple!” he said, grasping their hands on each side of him.  
  
“Unique…?” Amy asked hesitantly, worried that they had blown it already.  
  
“Yes! Of course, every couple is unique, but the two of you have such an _energy_ about you...” He paused, apparently looking for the right words. “You are so comfortable around each other, you joke together, it almost seems as if you have known each other for years, but there is also a tension that feels like a brand new relationship.”  
  
Both detectives gaped at the man, surprised by how on the mark his analysis was.  
  
“We’ve only known each other a few months, though,” Jake replied.  
  
“Well, with soulmates, a few months or a few years does not make a great difference.” Flowers shrugged. “You seem to complement each other in ways I have rarely seen. You’re a team.”  
  
Amy looked at Jake and tried to hide her panic as she ran over the best possible responses in her head, and saw that he appeared to be doing the same thing. Suddenly, he broke out in what she knew to be a fake grin.  
  
“Wow, Mr. Flowers, you sure do have us pegged.” He managed a laugh. “Thank you for your kind words. I’m lucky to have found Amy here, and we’re lucky we heard about someone as insightful as you.”  
  
“No, Mr. Butkis, I am the lucky one,” Flowers said, grabbing their hands again. Amy smiled at him, trying to hide her discomfort.  
  
“Oh, look, we’re back at your office!” Jake nearly shouted, prying his hand from Flowers’ to point out the window. “Amy, darling, it is time we head home.”  
  
“Alas, you are right. I shall see the two of you when I arrive at your home tomorrow, 9am sharp. The mornings are by far the best time to take in the aura of a household.” Flowers exited the car with them, finally freeing Amy’s hand. “Good night.”  
  
“Good night, Mr. Flowers,” Amy said, trying to resist the urge to wipe her palm on her dress while he was still looking.  
  
They turned away from Flowers and walked to their car.  
  
“That was the most uncomfortable car ride of my life,” Jake said with a shudder.  
  
“He’s definitely one of the most unusual perps I’ve spent time with.” Amy stopped to pull the keys out of her purse. “When he’s doing his observation stuff, he’s really good at disappearing. But as soon as he acknowledges us again, he just gets weirder and weirder. And I’m still wondering what he did in the restaurant. Our bill was paid, there wasn’t really anything for him to ‘finish up.’”  
  
“Maybe he bribed the waiter for our credit card information. Except, damn, we used the card to pay yesterday. He hardly needs to sneak for the information when his clients are straight up handing it to him,” he said as he got into the car. “Or maybe he just had to go to the bathroom, and it has nothing at all to do with the case.”  
  
They discussed various theories on Flowers’ motives and methods on the drive back to Brooklyn, but couldn’t reach any logical conclusions. If things continued the way they were, it seemed likely they would not be able to catch Flowers until he was in the act. A house that was expected to be robbed and bank accounts carefully monitored for theft was an easy set up. They just had to play along enough to get to that point. An undercover case worth so much would be great for their careers, but they both felt a little bit disappointed by the apparent lack of anything particularly interesting and notable along the way.

  


When they got back to the house, Amy set to work emailing Holt a status update. She was busy trying to figure out an impressive way to say “we found nothing” when Jake sat next to her on the couch.  
  
“So, I’ve been thinking about Flowers and his weird behaviors and like…” he started. “Maybe it wouldn’t feel quite as weird if we actually were a couple. He said nice things about couple us. It’s just… weird because we’re, you know, not. Actually a couple.”  
  
“Maybe…” She trailed off, weighing her options. If she continued the conversation in earnest, it could get a little too real and mess up their case and their friendship. If she accredited their believability to their undercover skills, it could result in more method acting practice that she could blame on the case. She closed the laptop, making a mental note to finish the email to Holt later on. “Either way, we’ve got some mad acting skills. I mean, he _totally_ bought us as a couple!”  
  
She thought she saw a flash of disappointment cross Jake’s face, but it was quickly replaced by his trademark grin.  
  
“Hells yes we do, and hells yes he did!” He lifted his hand for a high five, which Amy was happy to give him. “I mean, really, other than that whole physical thing, he was completely convinced.”  
  
“He may not have been convinced initially, but I think we managed to cover that base.” She was thrilled for the chance to talk about their earlier kiss, without actually _talking_ about it. “Good job, Peralta.”  
  
“Did you really just say good job about my kissing?” he asked, placing his hand across his chest in faux shock.  
  
“I meant good job _selling_ the kiss,” she teased, trying to keep her face relaxed as her heart pounded, “but I mean, one can only give as good as they get, so I would say that was a team effort. It was kind of a close call though, I think we need to practice more, like we talked about.”  
  
“Oh really?” He laughed as he said it, but she noticed his expression get a little more serious.  
  
“We agreed that method acting would be the best for the investigation.” She leaned forward and placed a quick kiss on his lips, lingering there as she spoke again. “So method acting it is.”  
  
Jake didn’t need to be told twice. He met Amy in the second kiss, carding his hands through her hair as he pulled her closer. Opening her mouth, she took his bottom lip lightly between her teeth and elicited a groan from him that she desperately wanted to hear again. She broke away only long enough to straddle his lap and push him further into the couch. His lips traveled from her mouth to her neck, and all that mattered was getting closer to him. Lifting his head so their lips could meet again, she began unbuttoning his shirt.  
  
At this, he broke the kiss and gently pulled away.  
  
“Amy,” he said, breathing heavy and eyes dark, “I think that’s enough practice for now.”  
  
She could see the desire written all over his face, but realized that she had come very close to pushing a boundary even “method acting” wouldn’t call for. Feeling simultaneously thankful for and disappointed by Jake’s awareness, Amy disentangled herself from him and stood up.  
  
“Good point, we’re not even being monitored yet.” She forced a smile and picked the discarded laptop from earlier off of the coffee table, carrying it with her to the dining room table. “There’s other work to do!”  
  
He looked at her as if she was a cold case he couldn’t quite solve, and it made her a little uncomfortable. She had her excuse in place for any romantic thing she could do during this investigation, but was worried that she had made herself a little too obvious. She was known for throwing herself into her work, yes, but not throwing herself at her coworkers. Part of her felt embarrassed - that _Jake_ was setting professional boundaries while she was pushing them - but another part was positive that he was just as into that kiss as she was. Nonetheless, he had always respected her boundaries when it mattered, and she needed to respect his now… even if that meant less kissing. After ten minutes of awkward silence, she felt she had to say something.  
  
“Hey, um…” she began, “I’m sorry if I came on a little too strong. I really didn’t mean to push things or make you uncomfortable.”  
  
Jake had been reviewing case files on his computer, but seemed to freeze when she spoke. A moment later, he turned towards her with a big smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.  
  
“Uncomfortable? Not at all,” he said with bravado. “The fact is, we’re both super hot detectives who have been single for awhile, so naturally that was… fun. But anymore than that would get weird in the long run. I mean, it’s not like we _like_ each other like that anymore, but still. We don’t want to be the next Charles and Gina.”  
  
They both shuddered at the thought, and Amy tried not to focus on the hurt brought up by his casual reference to their _past_ feelings.  
  
“Ha, yeah, definitely not.” She bit her lip as she thought about how to move forward. “So… do you want to stop our all-in approach?”  
  
“No!” he blurted. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Like you presented earlier, it’s for the best of the case that we stay in couple mode. We just have to be careful, set up sound ground rules.”  
  
“Okay.” She couldn’t help but smile in relief, something that probably was not a good sign. “Ooh, I’ll make a list!”  
  
The next half hour was spent picking out a font and a layout (“font sets the tone for the whole document!”), but then it was time to make the more important decisions. Amy was surprised by how easily conversation flowed, and she couldn’t decide if it was because it was framed as work or because it was just so easy for them to talk to each other about _anything_ when they finally got over themselves enough to start. The completed list laid out 57 specific guidelines, the most important basics being: clothes on, hands above the belt, stay vertical, and the safeword is “Gruber.” She had to admit that hearing him talk so much about rules he actually intended to keep was kind of a turn on, but dwelling on that would probably result in a violation of rule #5.  
  
Jake began making dinner in the kitchen as Amy put the finishing touches on the list. Printed paper in hand, she felt a lot more free than she had since the case began. She could follow rules, be a professional, _and_ get to make out with Jake on his stupid face (and no lower than his neck, rule #23). Sitting at the table, she watched him making spaghetti and felt content. Somehow, when she was with him, she cared a little bit less about the inevitable fallout this assignment would have. She walked into the kitchen and placed her arms around his waist, resting her head over his shoulder as he stirred the sauce.  
  
“Thanks for being a good partner, Peralta,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.  
  
“You’re not so bad yourself, Santiago,” he replied, and she could feel the smile growing on his face. “Now back off before you get bad cooking cooties on the food.”  
  
“Rude,” she said, giving him a flick on the back of the head before walking out of the kitchen, unable to wipe the grin off of her face.


	8. Chapter 8

The next morning Amy woke and found herself curled up behind Jake, her arm draped over his waist. She tightened her arm around him and kissed his cheek.  
  
“Mmmph,” he groaned in response. “Amy?”  
  
“Good morning, sleepy head,” she replied.  
  
"What timesit?" he mumbled, turning over to face and her and giving her a sleepy smile that nearly made her heart burst.  
  
Amy looked at the clock and felt a sudden sense of panic.  
  
“Shit, it’s 8:45! Flowers is going to be here in fifteen minutes!” She jumped out of bed, cursing herself for apparently sleeping through their alarm.  
  
They had stayed up late the night before, reminiscing about old cases as they prepared the house to look as thoroughly “coupled” as possible. Pictures of the two of them (mostly older ones with badges cropped out), a full selection of blue and pink toiletries set up in the bathroom, his and hers coffee mugs, and the finishing touch - a framed vinyl single of Total Eclipse of the Heart that Jake borrowed from Gina.  
  
“Amy,” he yawned, “Chill out. He’s coming over to observe, the house is set up, we don’t actually have to do anything in particular to get ready.”  
  
“I would still rather be completely conscious and prepared. We don’t know what he’s going to throw at us!” She punctuated the word throw by throwing clean pairs of jeans and underwear (which, she noted with relief, did not have mesh lining) at him. “Time to get up!”  
  
“Fine, fine…” he grumbled, as Amy continued her frantic running around the room.

  


 

They had hardly managed to get the coffee started when the doorbell rang. Putting on big grins, they went to answer the door.  
  
“Good morning, Mr. Flowers!” Amy greeted him.  
  
“And a good morning to you, Ms. Garcia and Mr. Butkis!” Flowers walked inside the house without waiting for them to lead, carrying a briefcase.  
  
“Can we offer you some coffee?” Jake asked him.  
  
“No, no, don’t worry about me. Just go about your usual business, and I will take in the aura of the house. I will explore a little, if you don’t mind, there is no need to follow me.” Flowers gave them a simpering smile, and Amy wondered how anyone fell for his spiel.  
  
“Alright, sounds good.” Amy turned around as Flowers walked away, raising her eyebrows at Jake.  
  
“Wow,” he said as soon as Flowers was out of earshot, “How obvious could he get?”  
  
“Is it bad to say that I’m a little disappointed this might not be much of a challenge after all?” She sighed.  
  
“I was just thinking the same thing.” He grinned at her. “We should probably shut up though before he comes back.”  
  
They spent the next hour trying to appear natural while listening in for anything suspicious. Occasionally they’d hear a gasp or a ‘hmmm,’ but mostly he was silent as he went in and out of the rooms around them. Eventually, they ended up playing hangman while nestled together on the couch. Amy was absentmindedly drumming her fingers on Jake’s knee as he guessed letters (her word was pineapple, and he had a frustrating lack of system to his guessing), when Flowers walked into the room and sat in a chair in front of them.  
  
“Your house has a very alarming aura.” Flowers looked at them with concern. “I don’t often do follow up questions, preferring the environment to speak for itself, but things are not adding up.”  
  
“Oh?” Jake responded in a slightly strangled voice.  
  
“How long have you lived here?” Flowers asked.  
  
“Just over a month.” Amy replied, wracking her brain for any mistakes they may have made.  
  
“Oh! Well, that explains most of it probably,” Flowers laughed. “You see, the house is providing a very different sense than the two of you do. More volatile, less endearing.”  
  
“Well that makes sense,” Jake looked visibly relieved, “We bought the house from a woman who said her troublesome grandson used to live here.”  
  
“The other thing that seemed off to me, though, was in the bedroom,” Flowers began. “I had assumed, given what I have seen and the fact that you are already cohabitating, that you two had a physical relationship. Are the two of you having sex?”  
  
Amy instinctively pulled her hand away from Jake’s knee, caught off guard by the question. She could feel him tense beside her.  
  
“Is, um, is that really relevant to planning our wedding?” she managed to say.  
  
“Not directly, but it is necessary for my methods to truly understand a couple, and this information is relevant to my understanding,” he stated.  
  
“Well um, we’re, um.” She was horrified by her inability to speak.  
  
“No, Mr. Flowers, we are not having sex.” Jake choked on the last word.  
  
“Why not?” Flowers asked, looking sincere and as if it wasn’t an incredibly invasive question to ask.  
  
“Because Jake is a virgin!” Amy blurted out.  
  
“What?!” Jake turned to her, looking indignant.  
  
“Now it’s nothing to be ashamed of, honey,” she said, placing her hand on his cheek consolingly before turning back to Flowers. “He told me when we first met that he wanted to save himself for marriage, and I was too in love to let that put me off, as much as I wanted to rip his clothes off right there!”  
  
“ _Wow_ darling, don’t you think that’s enough information for now?” he asked with a strained laugh.  
  
“Sorry dear, it just seems pertinent for Mr. Flowers to know. I will admit, this is part of why we decided to get married so fast!” Her accompanying laugh sounded fake to her own ears, and she hoped it was fooling Flowers.  
  
“Ah, that makes perfect sense!” Flowers replied, a smile returning to his face. “I just sensed a lot of tension in the bedroom, built up frustration, and it wasn’t making sense, since the two of you have been so clearly interested in each other, both physically and emotionally. But if you are resisting going that far, all of the build up is easily explained!”  
  
Once again, Amy and Jake had to work not to gawk at the man who read them, and apparently the _house_ , so well.  
  
“Actually, we’ve even got a list of rules,” Jake added suddenly. “I want to hold true to my morals, but this temptress makes it _really_ hard, so we came up with a plan. Certain things are simply off limit until after the wedding!”  
  
Amy grinned at Jake, impressed with how smoothly the two of them had (accidentally) managed to give logical explanations for their actual undercover rules. If they had any jarring moments in front of Flowers now, he shouldn’t get suspicious.  
  
“How thorough!” Flowers chuckled. “In that case, nothing else seems terribly out of place and I think the wedding is coming together in my head very well indeed. I will just stay awhile longer and observe as you go about your day.”  
  
They tried to think of domestic activities to keep them busy until Flowers left. After creating a grocery list, doing (unnecessary) laundry, and playing 12 rounds of Mario Kart (she’ll admit that she relished in the shocked look on Jake’s face when she won, as if she didn’t play with her nieces and nephews), they were running low on ideas for just sitting around the house. They needed to sweep the house for the cameras somehow, just to find out their locations, and they couldn’t do that while Flowers was there.  
  
“Oh, sweetie, I just remembered!” Amy began, clutching Jake’s arm. “We’re supposed to meet the Campbells for coffee this afternoon!  
  
“Darnit, dumpling, I think you’re right.” Jake sighed dramatically. “Mr. Flowers, we’ll have to see you tomorrow for the cake tasting. Right now, we have to meet with some friends who probably wouldn’t approve of having a fifth wheel. So sorry!”  
  
Flowers, who had remained in his chair the entire three hours that they had been killing time, stood up and grabbed his briefcase.  
  
“I completely understand. I will see you both tomorrow, please meet me at La Pâtisserie du Navire. Have a wonderful day!” Flowers said as he left.  
  
“Okay, so we had better get going then.” Jake announced a little dramatically to the room, unsure where the cameras were placed.  
  
“I’m right here, honey, no need to yell.” Amy rolled her eyes. “Let’s get our stuff and head out to the cafe.”

  


 

They took the subway to a coffee shop that was further away than was reasonable, in an effort to make sure Flowers wouldn’t see them. He wasn’t the type to take public transportation, for one, and he would be unlikely to visit a dive coffee shop. Once they got settled into a corner table and confirmed no one they knew was near, they were able to discuss things openly.  
  
“Does it freak you out how good this guy is?” Jake asked.  
  
“Oh my god, yes,” Amy replied, relieved that he was caught off guard by it as well.  
  
“I don’t buy into his aura crap, yet he is _really_ on point,” he sighed. “He seems like such an obvious criminal, but then there’s the part where he actually does his job instead of a quick swindle and out.”  
  
“Maybe this is how he stays in business. He offers as actual service, he gets referrals and new clients…” she shrugged. “No one expects a crook who does a good job. We need to call Rosa though and get someone to check for the cameras.”  
  
Amy left the table to the make the call to Rosa, knowing from experience that phone calls went smoother without Jake trying to chime in. She explained what had happened that morning, including the incredibly shady behavior from Flowers. In the middle of telling her about how awkward it was to have Flowers there silently watching them, Rosa interrupted.  
  
“So how is it dating Jake?” she asked.  
  
“Um, I’m not, we’re engaged, I mean…” Amy was completely unprepared for Rosa asking about that part of the investigation. “Pretending to be in a relationship with him seems to be fooling Flowers, we’ve managed to keep our stories straight.”  
  
“That’s not what I meant.” Rosa replied, and Amy could nearly _hear_ the eyeroll that accompanied. “I meant that you two idiots are so obviously into each other that I want to make sure it’s not interfering with the case. And that you’re okay or whatever.”  
  
“Oh! Oh, um, we’re not…” Amy sighed. “What the hell, you’re too good of a detective to lie to anyway. I honestly don’t know if he still has any feelings for me, he hasn’t said anything since before Sophia, so I kind of doubt it. But on my end, it’s going alright. I don’t think it’s harming the case at all, and as for me… I’ve been better but really, I think I’m fine.”  
  
“Okay, good. I-” Rosa began. “Nevermind. We’ll send someone to sweep ASAP. Don’t make me regret recommending you for this investigation, Santiago.”  
  
Amy stood in shock for a few moments after Rosa hung up. She really thought she had done a better job at hiding her feelings for Jake since the disastrous trip with Teddy, but apparently it wasn’t quite good enough to fool a whole room of detectives. Rosa had also said _into each other_ , indicating that she thought his feelings hadn’t changed as much as Amy believed they had. Choosing not to think too carefully about that, she took a deep breath and made her way back to the table.  
  
“Rosa said they’re going to send someone in to do the camera sweep, set up to look like an electrician,” she said brightly as she sat back down. “Until that’s done and we can tell if there are cameras in and if they have audio, we just have to play it carefully at the house. If they do find the camera, it should also help because the department will be able to tap into the wireless feeds and hopefully catch Flowers in the act.”  
  
“One of us needs to get a good look around Flowers’ office soon, too. I can’t shake the feeling that there’s more to this than the obvious.” He bit his bottom lip in concentration, and Amy couldn’t help but stare.  
  
She remembered the day before, biting that same lip herself, being so wrapped up in him that she had almost forgotten that they weren’t actually a _they_. She remembered her eyes being drawn to his mouth over a year ago when he left to go undercover and said the words that shook her world, before he was gone. She remembered dreaming about him for the entire six months he was gone, dreams in which those lips featured prominently. She wanted to take that lip out from between his teeth and put his mouth to better use.  
  
“Ames?” he asked hesitantly, “Are you alright?”  
  
“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine!” She jerked her eyes up to his and tried to look casual, though she could feel the embarrassment flooding her. “I was just thinking about what might be different at the precinct when we get done with all of this. A lot can happen in a short time.”  
  
He gave her a funny look she couldn’t quite read, and he took her hand in his.  
  
“Yeah, it can.” He smiled at her fondly. “We should probably head back and wait for the electrician. What do you say, darling?”  
  
“Sure thing, sweetie pie.” She grinned at him, keeping her hand entwined with his as they walked back to the subway station.


	9. Chapter 9

Most of the next week was a blur of wedding planning, domesticity, and dead ends. The evening after Flowers had visited the house, they had been unable to find any cameras, and things continued that way for the rest of the week. No matter how suspiciously he behaved, it never led to anything. Amy was frustrated, but she had to admit she was still enjoying being in a “relationship” with Jake. They had already started to fall into a routine, with him preparing meals whenever they didn’t order in, her cleaning up, casual kisses as they curled up together on the couch to watch movies, and little squabbles that mostly led to makeouts (with only a couple of “Gruber!” moments). She just would have enjoyed it more if the case was actually going somewhere.

On Monday, Amy and Jake went to a cake tasting Flowers had scheduled at a fancy bakery. They tried to get more information from Flowers about the rest of the plan (particularly if he would be visiting their home again), but they were told simply to “trust the process.” On the bright side - the cakes were _amazing_. Later, they thought something might be happening when they found him whispering furiously with the florist, but it turned out he was in the process of bargaining down a better price for their floral arrangements. Thursday, they went to pick out the stationery for their invitations. As they debated between classic floral and space age for their motif, they overheard Flowers say something about getting “back in _before_ the wedding” as he spoke on the phone, and they hoped he was talking about coming back to the house to install the surveillance. Unfortunately, it was followed by “I cannot congratulate them on their big day with my hair looking like this,” and they realized it probably wasn’t useful information.

By Friday, Amy felt ready to bang her head against the wall in frustration. Obviously, nothing was going to come from spending all day out and about with Flowers. So when he called that morning to request they visit him at his office instead of at the caterer’s as planned, she almost squealed in excitement at the chance to investigate a little more. She and Jake worked on a plan as they drove to the office.

“One of us needs to keep him busy with conversation while the other takes a look around the rest of his office,” she said. “I think you should probably be the one to work on the distraction, you’re better at rambling your way through improvisations.”

“Thanks, I think,” he said with a laugh.

“You’re welcome.” She grinned at him.

“Good morning, lovebirds!” Flowers said, standing to greet them as soon as they walked in the door. “Rather than visiting various catering locations as planned, I have convinced the caterers to come here to you. Feel free to leave your jackets and belongings on the hooks there, and follow me.”

“Why don’t you two go in? I’m just going to head to the ladies room to powder my nose.” Amy smiled at them, slowly walking towards the bathroom until she saw them enter the room with the catering. Quickly, she turned down the hall walked into the file room.

“Excuse me, miss!” A man who looked to be in his mid-twenties was sitting at a laptop in the file room and looked angry about her sudden appearance. “What are you doing in here?”

“Oh!” Amy exclaimed, surprised to find someone else in the room. “I’m Amy Garcia. I’m a client of Mr. Flowers, and I was just looking for the bathroom. Who are you?”

“I’m Mr. Flowers’ assistant, and this is definitely not the bathroom, so please leave,” he said abruptly, before standing up and nearly pushing her out the door.

She stood in the hallway, her mind racing. They had built all of their theories based on the idea that Flowers was operating alone - if he had an assistant, a whole new world of possibilities opened up. She hurried back to the catering display and found Jake suspiciously sniffing at a dish that looked like something Charles would love. He looked up and saw her, confusion clouding his features.

“Back so soon?” he asked, before catching himself on how weird a question that was after a bathroom trip and adding, “I suppose your makeup didn’t need much touching up after all.”

“Indeed, I’m good as new.” She smiled at him, as he clearly tried to decipher why she was back so soon. “And while I was out there, I took a wrong turn and ended up meeting Mr. Flowers’ _assistant_ , who appeared rather displeased to see me.”

Jake’s eyes widened as he seemed to catch her meaning immediately.

“Oh,” Flowers turned towards them and said with uncharacteristic distaste, “I’m sorry you had a run in with Quincy. He’s my nephew and he’s very good at the business end of things, but sometimes he lacks the.... grace necessary to work with clients.”

“I’m sure he’s fine,” Amy said, though she was sure of no such thing, “I met him as I accidentally walked into an office space instead of the ladies’ room, so his… less than service-oriented demeanor made sense.”

“He still ought to learn how to behave better. Chances are, you’ll rarely see him though. He covers the financial aspects and sometimes assists me with last minute errands around the planning.” Flowers said.

“What kind of errands?” Amy asked innocently.

“Oh, picking things up for the business, dropping off things at clients’ homes while we’re out, little things like that.” Flowers shrugged. “But now, let us bring our focus back to this divine bovine dish before us…”

“Yes, let’s hurry up and figure it out!” Jake said, grinning at Amy and bouncing a little.  
Amy returned his grin, excited about having a new lead. It was possible, of course, that nothing would come of it, but this was the first chance to do some actual investigating that they’d had in days. If this Quincy had access to clients’ financial records and sometimes even homes, he was likely part of the scheme.

 

Once they finished picking a catering choice, Flowers excused himself to go confirm the reservation information, giving the detectives a chance to have a quick, whispered conversation.

“How did no one ever mention Flowers working with an assistant?!” Jake asked.

“They didn’t even realize that Flowers had anything to do with their robberies, why would they have mentioned the assistant that they may or may not have even seen?” Amy responded.

“Fair enough. Either way, this is great news,” he began, “No wonder we haven’t caught Flowers being suspicious - there’s someone else to do the dirty work for him!”

“That, or this Quincy guy is behind it all. We’ve got to give him access to the house and see what happens,” she said.

“Well, honey,” he began in a loud voice, “I think you may have left the oven on at home! We can’t possibly review photographers with Mr. Flowers today, we’ve gotta go check!”

“What is this I hear about leaving?” Flowers entered the room upon hearing Jake’s attempt at getting this attention. “We’ve got so much more to do!”

“I think I left the oven on this morning,” Amy put on her most dramatically distressed face. “I have to go turn it off! Unless… is this the kind of thing you said your assistant sometimes does?”

“Yes, indeed, this is the kind of thing he _can_ do. If you are comfortable giving Quincy your keys, he can absolutely go check your oven for you,” he smiled at her and left again to get the assistant.

“Well. That was easy,” Jake said. “Now hopefully we’ll return home later to find creepy cameras everywhere!”  
“And in the mean time, one of us can sneak away to look at some of the files, since he’ll be gone,” she smiled at him. “Finally.”

Flowers returned with Quincy about five minutes later, and the latter looked far happier than he had when she met him an hour before.

“I am so sorry for how I acted earlier, Ms. Garcia,” Quincy said, with a smile that made Amy uncomfortable. “You had caught me off guard. I hope that we can move forward.”

“Of course,” she replied, handing him the house key. “Thank you so much for going to go deal with this for me! Better safe than sorry, I always say.”

“Indeed,” Quincy said before leaving the room.

“Now, if you would follow me, we can begin reviewing portfolios,” Flowers said as he led them back to his office.

As soon as Flowers had his back to them, they quickly formed a new plan through a few wild hand waving gestures and significant looks. Amy had to wonder when it was that they became so in sync that this kind of thing actually worked. Once they entered his office, she called Jake's phone before discreetly putting hers back in her pocket.

“Oh, I need to take this call, I'll be right back,” Jake said and left the room.

“So, what kind of photographers are we looking at?” Amy asked, determined to keep Flowers busy enough not to notice how long Jake would likely be gone.

Flowers began to describe the four photographers he chose for the Butkis-Garcia wedding, from their influences to the famous people they have done shoots for (“You should have seen what was planned for baby Chutney”), and before Amy knew it, Jake was back in the room and giving her a small head shake to indicate that he didn't find anything.

“I hope everything is alright,” Flowers said as Jake sat back down. “You do seem in poorer spirits after that call.”

“It's fine,” Jake sighed and looked at Amy. “They couldn't find the physical copies of the documents we need, so they're probably all digital and we'll have to track them down that way.”

“Ugh,” Amy grumbled, “Oh well. Mr. Flowers was just telling me about our best photographer candidates; let's keep going.”

 

 

After nearly two hours of looking through the various portfolios, Quincy returned to the office.

“Welcome back,” Flowers said, again catching Amy off guard with the seemingly uncharacteristic sneer he gave. “Please return Ms. Garcia's keys and get back to work.”

“Will do. The oven was off, by the way.” Quincy tossed the keys back to Amy, and walked out of the room with yet another smarmy smile on his face.

“You do not like your assistant, do you?” Jake asked Flowers.

“Is it that obvious?” Flowers sighed. “He's very good at what he does, but he simply does not seem to understand why I do what I do or care about it. His attitude is, clearly, a little draining to the process. But he is my nephew and I promised my sister he would be taken care of. I'm sorry that it's come up in what should be a very happy day, as all of these wedding planning days are.”

“No worries.” Amy smiled at him. “Back to the photographer, though, I'm leaning towards Sydney Lucas. I think Jake and I will have to discuss it more at home, but we should be decided by tomorrow.”

“I hope you have a wonderful day, Mr. Flowers,” Jake said, taking Amy's hand as they headed out the door.

“And you too, Mr. Butkis,” Flowers replied waving as they left.


	10. Chapter 10

As soon as they got into the car, they began discussing what had happened. Jake's search had come up empty, but Quincy had been gone a very long time for simply checking an oven. Their disappointment over finding nothing concrete was much less than their excitement about Quincy's odd behavior.

“It's probably bad that we're this excited about someone acting kind of shady,” Amy laughed.

“Well, for us, it means we're that much closer to serving justice!” Jake grinned at her. “And, come on, it's been so boring just waiting for something to happen without getting _any new information_.”

“ _So_ boring,” she agreed with a weak smile, surprised by the pang of hurt she felt by the implication that he hadn't enjoyed the rest of their time as much as she had.  
  
“But if I had to be bored, I'm glad it was with you.” He gave her a quick smile before looking back towards the road, making her heart race a little more than was probably reasonable.

“Me too,” she said. “I'm going to call Rosa and have her run a background check and send in another sweeper to see if we're right and Quincy really did put in the cameras.”

 

 

When they got home, the “electrician” was already waiting to come in and enact the plan they had made. His apprentice _Charles_ was a surprise, though.

“Hi!” Charles practically yelled. “I'm his apprentice, ready to learn all about...electric stuff!”  
  
“Welcome.” Amy said, stifling a giggle at how clearly Charles was resisting hugging Jake.  
  
“I'm so glad you could make it,” Jake said loudly once they were inside, putting on a show for the potential cameras. “We've been hearing a strange buzzing, so if you could just check the wiring around the house...”

Amy rolled her eyes at his obvious display.

“I think I see what you mean,” the sweeper said after running a device near a wall, “I hear the noise and I'll check out the other rooms real quick.”

Charles gave a thumbs up to Jake and Amy, before following the sweeper. Clearly, at least one camera had already been located. They couldn't keep grins off of their faces as they watched Charles and the sweeper walk further into the house. Finally, a new lead! They sat down on the couch and began discussing Butkis and Garcia's plan for the following day, trying to keep their cover if Quincy was indeed watching. By the time the sweeper had come back into the living room, Amy was curled up against Jake's chest as they talked.

“Ahem,” announced Charles with a knowing grin. “Sorry to interrupt you _lovebirds_ , but we've finished looking at everything.”

“Great!” said Jake, standing up so quickly Amy almost fell over. “My _fiancee_ and I would love to know what’s going on.”

Amy was a little surprised by Jake’s reaction. She had gotten so used to being physical with Jake that she had kind of forgotten that it wasn’t their normal just a week and a half ago. Even so, despite the look he gave them, Charles knew that they were undercover and that acting like a couple was to be expected.

“I heard the buzzing in almost all of the rooms,” the sweeper said, clearly unsure about the strange dynamic in the room at that moment. “And I’ve even located the source. Thankfully, it’s just a noise from the telephone pole, nothing to worry about and nothing we’re going to have to fix in here.”

“We’ll just let you get back to your evening,” Charles said, still grinning at the pair of detectives. “You looked so cute there, I hate to interrupt.”

“Jakey,” Amy said, grabbing his hand and giving him a look that she hoped said _chill out_. “Now that these gentlemen are done, let’s go for a walk and get some coffee, it’s such a nice evening.”

Amy nearly pushed Charles and the sweeper out the door, while pulling Jake behind her and snagging her laptop bag. The duos waved goodbye to each other and walked in separate directions. As soon as they rounded the corner from the house, she hit Jake on the arm.  
“What was that for?!” he asked, rubbing his arm.

“Why did you freak out like that when Charles walked in?” she asked him.  
“Well, he, I, uh,” he sighed, “it was just weird, okay? I know we’ve been doing this… thing for the last couple of weeks and it’s gone well, but having Charles see it, I just instantly thought of what he might say.”

Amy took a deep breath. Of course Jake was worried that Charles might think it was real. He had only just stopped bringing up Jake’s past feelings for Amy, and Charles reading more into their cover than was real (for Jake, at least) would probably give new life to that awkwardness when they returned. As if it wasn’t going to be weird enough. She chose to push that thought out of her mind and move forward.

“Okay, but he knows we’re _undercover_ and that it’s our _job_ ,” she said. “Freaking out like that could make anyone who might be watching suspicious.”

“I know, I know. All in, even when friends make completely unnecessary visits to our fake home. I just panicked.” Jake ran his hand through his hair. “Let’s just get settled and get into that video feed, Charles just texted me that they’ve got the access set up.”

“I’m sorry for punching you,” she said in an attempt to lighten the tone again. “It’s still kind of my reflex when I’m annoyed enough, growing up with seven brothers will do that to you.”

“Apology accepted,” he laughed, still rubbing his arm. “I forgive you for possibly maiming me.”

“Oh come on, I didn’t _maim_ you,” she laughed, relieved that they were moving on.

“I could _sue_!” he teased.

 

 

Once at the coffee shop, they viewed the video feed and saw that every room but the bathrooms was monitored.

“At least he’s _slightly_ less creepy than he could be?” Jake said.

“Still, ew.” Amy wrinkled her nose at the confirmation of cameras in the bedroom. “Now that the department is recording all of the video, we should hopefully get some proof that he was there to help the case. It wouldn’t be enough to charge him with everything, though. And we still have no idea if he’s acting alone, or with Flowers.”

“Is it weird that I really hope Flowers is innocent?” he asked.

“No, I don’t think so. I’m hoping the same thing. Flowers is weird, don’t get me wrong, but he has seemed like a legitimately nice - if incredibly overbearing - guy.” She shrugged.

“And technically we’re paying him to be overbearing,” he added. “So that’s not a problem.”

“I think our best bet is to make it very clear to Quincy that we won’t be home, every chance we get. Maybe he’ll do something before we go on the ‘honeymoon’ and we’ll get even more evidence against him,” she suggested. “It’s worth trying. Because even if we had found something when you looked in the file room, we couldn’t actually use it until we had a warrant. This might get us that warrant.”

They continued to watch the uneventful video feed as they discussed possible directions the case could go. Eventually, they had exhausted all of the “maybes” they could think of, and decided to head home. As they packed up, Amy thought about how much she was looking forward to curling up next to Jake on the couch and just relaxing after the long day. She knew it was all going to end in a couple of weeks and that she would have to deal with the fallout, but right now? She was just going to enjoy it while it lasted.


	11. Chapter 11

The following morning, Amy woke up early enough to surprise Jake with breakfast. After all, he had been cooking so much for her, it was only fair. As she walked back from the deli around the corner, she couldn’t stop herself from humming. Everything just felt... _right_. From waking up next to Jake to finding a new lead in the case, things were good. He came downstairs just as she was setting the food out on the table.  
  
“Mmm, something smells good down here,” he said, smiling momentarily before a look of horror grew over his face. “Wait, Ames, did you cook?”  
  
“No, no, don’t worry,” she replied, rolling her eyes at him. “But I woke up early enough to go grab some bagels and thought I’d give you the morning off of kitchen duty.”  
  
“Okay, good!” he said with obvious relief. “I mean, I would’ve appreciated the thought behind whatever you might have cooked, but I’m glad that I can sincerely say thank you for this breakfast.”  
  
“Wow, so heartfelt!” she laughed, dramatically placing her hand over her heart.  
  
“I’ll have to teach you some basic cooking skills one of these days,” he said as he sat down at the table.  
  
“Cooking lessons from a man that has eaten his cereal with orange soda. I never would have thought,” she teased. “But I’d like that.”  
  
“Hopefully you’re a better cooking student than you were for dancing…” he looked at her with mock pity.  
  
“I’m a great student, you jerk!” She smacked his shoulder lightly.  
  
He stood up to get some coffee and placed a quick kiss on her cheek.  
  
“You know you love me,” he laughed as he walked away from her.  
  
“I do,” she said without fully realizing it. The meaning of her words hit her as she saw Jake tense and stumble almost imperceptibly before continuing into the kitchen.  
  
“...shmoopsie bear,” she added, hoping that he bought her attempt to make her statement ‘in character.’  
  
He walked back into the dining room a moment later, a more muted smile on his face. Amy had seen that smile a few times before, the one that didn’t quite reach his eyes, most memorably back when she had begun dating Teddy.  
  
“So, what time do we need to be there today?” Jake asked, and Amy was thankful for the path back towards neutral territory.  
  
“He said 10 o’clock, and I think that all we need to do today is finalize the photographer. After that we’re going to run errands _all day_ ,” she said, emphasizing the last word in case Quincy was listening.  
  
“That’s right,” Jake said. “I would guess we won’t be back until 6 at the _earliest_.”  
  
Amy had to stifle a laugh at the earnest expression on his face as he overacted. Fortunately for the case, laughter and seemingly odd behaviors were the norm in their house and this moment probably wouldn’t be seen as any weirder than the others. They talked in extensively boring detail about their errands as they finished their breakfast, before heading to Flowers’.

 

Their time with Flowers went better than Amy had expected. Over the course of 30 minutes, they had settled on their photographer and set the day’s bait with Quincy. As planned, Jake began talking about their busy afternoon as soon as the assistant entered the room.  
  
“It’s just too darn bad that we’re gonna be so busy today,” Jake said. “Grocery shopping, meeting with your brother, fixing our taxes…”  
  
“It’s gotta be done, sweetie,” Amy cut in. “Tomorrow we can get a second opinion on the buzzing in the house, I’ll call another electrician. I swear it’s coming from the walls, not the telephone pole outside.”  
  
She snuck a glance at Quincy as she spoke, and he appeared to be paying more attention than such a conversation would normally warrant. Jake reaffirmed their expected “errand” timeline and they moved on in conversation. Amy couldn’t be completely confident that their hints would work, but already luck seemed to be on their side today. Shortly after their run in with Quincy, they were off to yet another coffee shop to set up camp. 

 

Two hours and too many shots of espresso later, there was no sign of the assistant - or anything else of interest - on the video feeds. By this point, talk about the case had long faded into their continued discussion on the best cop movies (excluding _Die Hard_ and all related sequels, as their inclusion would make the conversation pointless). Amy was in the midst of extolling the virtues of _The Heat_ as a new essential to the buddy cop genre when the image on the laptop finally changed. Someone was opening the door.  
  
“Okay, fine, I’ll admit that I didn’t see it. We can watch that one tonight and you can - ” Jake said before she shushed him.  
  
“Put your headphones back in, he’s in the house,” she said, grinning at the screen. “God, I love building a case.”  
  
They watched Quincy go up to every camera and inspect it, frustration evidently growing as each one lacked the noise they had described. As he reached the last one, his phone rang.  
  
“Hey, I’m looking at them now, and I don’t see or hear anything weird,” he began. “We lucked out when the first person they brought in didn’t notice the surveillance, but what are the chances of that happening twice? I only put the damn things in yesterday and they might be blowing it already.”  
  
Amy’s jaw dropped and she turned to look at Jake, who was wearing a similar expression as he stared wide eyed at the screen. Quincy was _accidentally confessing on tape_. They looked back to the video.  
  
“No! I’ve never had any problems before,” he continued. “We’ve set these up in seven different homes and it’s always worked. I get the access and the bank info, you pull the jobs, we get richer. Simple. I’m not gonna let some shitty cameras ruin this one for us, I’m taking them down and we’ll have to start again.”  
  
Quincy paced as he listened to whoever was on the phone. Amy could not believe that the person who had successfully robbed seven houses and stolen nearly a million dollars was sloppy enough to have this conversation in front of cameras, even if it was his own.  
  
“You seriously want to finish the job today?” Quincy yelled into the phone. “They let me into their house _yesterday_ , they’re not going to look very far if they get robbed the very next day, you idiot. No, we’re just gonna have to scrap it and worst case scenario, we only steal the money. I’m removing the cameras and I’m out.”  
  
Amy and Jake watched in shocked silence as Quincy removed each camera, until all of their feeds were dead. Jake removed his headphones and turned to Amy.  
  
“Holy _shit_! He just confessed like a straight up _Scooby-Doo_ villain!” he squealed.  
  
“We had better call Holt and have Quincy picked up for proper questioning right away. Maybe we’ll even get him with the cameras still on him,” she said.  
She called Holt and updated him on what they had just seen, trying to focus on the conversation as Jake made up new lyrics to the _Scooby-Doo_ theme in honor of what they had just witnessed. Honestly, she hardly even cared, it was even sort of enjoyable. She began chair dancing to the song as she listened to Holt, but then he said something that brought her back to the reality of the situation.  
  
“I’m sorry, Captain Holt, could you repeat that?” she asked.  
  
“Assuming we can get the identity of the partner on the phone out of the younger Mr. Flowers and make an arrest, I will expect you and Peralta to work with Diaz on completing the investigations,” Holt told her. “I look forward to having you back in the office tomorrow.”  
  
“Tomorrow?” she squeaked.  
  
“Yes, of course. We have enough to detain the perpetrator and get the needed warrants. There is no purpose to continuing the undercover investigation. Diaz should be in touch soon,” he said before hanging up.  
  
Jake was still wrapped up in his victory song and thankfully did not seem to notice Amy’s reaction to the phone call. She was sure that her face would have given her away if he was paying attention. She had prepared herself for two and a half more weeks of being undercover with Jake. Sure, she knew that when it ended it would probably hurt like hell, but she was supposed to have more time to prepare. They were going to watch _The Heat_ tonight. Now she was going to go back to her empty apartment.  
  
“Amy?” Jake was waving his hand at her, apparently done with his celebration. “Ames? Are you alright?”  
  
“Yes!” she said a little too brightly. “I was just lost in thought.”  
  
“Okay then,” he gave her a skeptical look. “What did Holt say?”  
  
“They’re sending out some uniforms to arrest him and Rosa will do the first interrogation, hopefully get the name of whoever he was working with.” She braced herself for the next part, hoping she passed for happy. “And if that all works out, we’ll get to go home tonight and be back at our desks tomorrow morning!”  
  
“Wait, tomorrow?” he asked.  
  
“That’s right. Holt seems confident that the video has gotten the ball rolling enough that we don’t need to waste departmental resources, including our time, on an undercover investigation.” She forced a smile on her face. “It’s probably all, uh, above cover from here on out.”  
  
“That’s great,” he said, the same small smile from this morning on his face again. “Go team! So I guess we had better go home, er, to the house and wait to hear about what’s next…”  
  
“Yep,” she sighed, avoiding eye contact with Jake as she collected her belongings. “On to whatever is next.”


	12. Chapter 12

They drove back to the house in the most uncomfortable silence Amy had ever experienced. This topped every awkward pause over the course of the investigation. Hell, it even surpassed the awkwardness of the horrible dinner when she broke up with Teddy. Somehow, the fact that it wasn’t brought on by something either of them accidentally said or did made it so much worse. You can’t just change the topic or move on when it’s not a matter of what was said, but everything that isn’t being said. She was at a loss for words. As they walked into the house, the silence was broken by her text tone going off.  
  
“Ohthankgod,” she muttered as she opened the text. “Jake, Rosa says they’ve arrested Quincy and are starting the interrogation now. Hopefully they’ll have more information for us soon.”  
  
“Cool cool cool cool cool,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “So I guess we’ll just hang tight until then?”  
  
“I guess,” she replied.  
  
“So…” he began, and Amy felt the tension rebuilding.  
  
“I need to go water my hair!” she blurted. “I mean, wash my hair. In water. Take a shower. Bye.”  
  
She turned away from Jake before she could see his reaction to her poorly worded outburst. As she went to follow through with the unnecessary shower she just committed herself to, she tried to develop a game plan. It seemed like her best bet was to be open about the awkwardness (but _not_ the feelings that exacerbated it) and hope that they could fumble through until it went away. Their relationship always worked better when they were straightforward, and the thought of continued silence from _Jake Peralta_ was kind of unbearable. They would have to talk. 

  


 

An hour later, as Amy was hiding in the bedroom and typing up the rough draft of her “It’s Okay That It’s Awkward” speech, she heard a knock.  
  
“Amy?” Jake called from behind the closed door. “Can I come in?”  
  
“Yeah,” she replied, taking a deep breath and trying to quickly decide which opener was best for the speech.  
  
“Hey…” he said as he walked into the room. “We need to talk. About us and...what things are gonna be like.”  
  
“Yeah, we do,” she said, sighing with relief that he brought it up first. “Jake, we both know that it’s going to be super awkward for awhile, and that’s okay. Awkward is okay. In fact, I _excel_ at awkward. Eventually, it goes away. We’ve gotten through a lot of weird things in our partnership and I doubt this will be the last. So we’ve made out with each other kind of a lot in the last couple weeks - oh well. If Charles and Gina can move past that… _thing_ that they had, we can easily get past an undercover assignment. We’re too good as partners to let this trip us up.”  
  
“Partners, right,” he said quietly, and Amy saw the ghost of a frown on his face for just a moment before it was replaced with a not-quite-believable grin. “You said just about everything I was about to; I think we’ve got it covered! The timing kind of threw me for a loop, but it’s probably better. It would be even weirder if the assignment kept going.”  
  
“Exactly! So, we’re good?” she asked, offering a handshake.  
  
“We’re good as we can be right now,” he laughed, shaking her hand firmly.  
  
It was another hour still before Rosa called them back with the results of her interrogation. In that time, they decided to watch _Die Hard_ , figuring that the familiar movie would help fight the weirdness more than a new one would. What Amy hadn’t factored in was that they had spent the last week and a half in very close physical proximity every time they watched movies, so the fact that they were sitting on opposite ends of the couch was jarring. When Rosa’s call came in, Amy felt relief wash over her. She hoped that she wouldn’t continue needing others’ interference to save her from her own thoughts, though.  
  
“Rosa!” she answered the phone.  
  
“The dumbass gave us a full written confession. He gave up his partner, some guy he went to school with, and he even turned over his records. I think he was afraid of me,” Rosa said, and Amy could practically _hear_ her smile. “A team is coming to help clear the house. Pack your crap up and come in to give your statements.”  
  
“We got the confession,” Amy said, turning to Jake as she ended the call. “Rosa says that he spilled everything. She expects us to be back at the precinct soon, I think.”  
  
“Okay,” he said. “Do we need to finish up anything else here? It seems rude to leave it half lived in…”  
  
“I’ve seen your apartment, Jake,” she smirked, “You’re really worried about cleaning the safe house?”  
  
“I may be a slob around myself, but I know how to be a guest,” he replied in a dramatic huff.  
  
“Whatever. No, a team is going to fix everything back up, we just need to collect our personal belongings and head into work.” She stood up from the couch. “We’d better get going.”  
  
They made small talk as they packed, mostly about the things they had missed at the precinct or their respective homes, but they tried to avoid getting too close to each other. This was made difficult by the fact that they were both trying to maneuver in the small bedroom - each time they bumped into each other, Amy felt a jolt. It was amazing to her how much had changed in a few hours. Before this case, they had never been weird about day-to-day physical contact. During the case, they had engaged in a _lot_ more touching - both casual and… not so casual - than ever before, and it had become comfortable. But now that the pretense was gone, _everything_ felt different. She was relieved when they finally finished, hopeful that a return to the station would help ease them back into the norm.

 

Unfortunately, things at the station did not turn out quite as Amy had hoped. She had anticipated awkwardness between herself and Jake, but she had not thought about the potential for their colleagues to make it _so much worse_. Once the initial rounds of “welcome back” were finished, including Charles giving Jake an actual _ten minute_ hug, things got weird again. They had barely made it back to their desks before Charles began.  
  
“How are you guys doing, now that you’ve been so, you know, _romantic_?” he asked, waggling his eyebrows for emphasis.  
  
“Fine?” Amy squeaked, disappointed in herself for losing her planned cool so quickly.  
  
“Come on, Charles - we’re professionals,” Jake said as he shot Charles a look that could kill, “It was all a little strange but we’re cool now. Right, Amy?”  
  
“Right!” she said with a little too much enthusiasm, before dialing herself back and adding, “It’s not that difficult to keep undercover boundaries.”  
  
“So nothing happened?” Charles looked disappointed.  
  
“Of course not,” Gina interrupted, and Amy felt thankful for one brief moment before she continued. “Do they _look_ like they were getting any recently?”  
  
“Everyone shut up, I need these two to get to work,” Rosa said, “Come on.”  
  
They followed Rosa into Holt’s office. Amy was glad to leave everyone else behind, but she caught far too many knowing glances before closing the door.  
  
“Santiago, Peralta, excellent work,” Holt greeted them, “I need you to finish with the senior Mr. Flowers’ services - something that does not indicate your true identities or any information pertinent to the case - and collaborate with Diaz to complete your parts of the investigation.”  
  
“Oh my gosh,” Amy said, “I hadn’t even thought about what to do with Flowers, now that he apparently isn’t guilty.”  
  
“Yeah, I feel kind of bad,” Jake added. “He was very invested in planning our wedding, and now all of that work is down the drain.”  
  
“Speaking of your _wedding_ ,” Rosa gave them a meaningful look. “Are you guys sure that things aren’t weird for you now?”  
  
“Weird? Hah! Why would they be weird?” Amy asked with a slightly disturbing laugh.  
  
“We’re totally fine,” Jake sighed with exasperation. “Honestly, I don’t know why everyone is so freaked out about it.”  
  
“If the two of you had any concerns about working with each other, that would be understandable after such an investigation,” Holt said. “But I will take your words that things are fine. Once you have finished what needs to be done, I expect each of you to take a few extra days off to recuperate. You are dismissed.”  
  
As Amy and Jake walked to their desks, Rosa stopped them and whispered, “Briefing room, now.”  
  
They followed Rosa in and Amy dreaded whatever was going to come next. She had thought she would be glad to be back at work, but everything was tense and awkward, and frankly? It sucked.  
  
“I don’t believe for one minute that the two of you are _fine_ ,” Rosa said to them as soon as the door shut.  
  
Amy began to protest, but Rosa held up her hand and continued.  
  
“But that’s only my problem if it stops you guys from doing your job. So don’t make it my problem, and I won’t bring it up,” she said, “Now, what are you going to do about Flowers?”  
  
“It’s an ongoing investigation, so we can’t tell him who we are or why we’re discontinuing services,” Amy said.  
  
“And we don’t want to completely burn that bridge because he may still be a useful contact if it turns out he is involved,” Jake said.  
  
“I think…” Amy started, “I think we have to break up.”  
  
“What?” he looked confused for a moment before catching on. “Oh, yes, you’re probably right. Aw man, this is gonna suck.”  
  
“Whatever,” Rosa said. “Just go do it.”

 

Amy was thankful that she and Jake had such a decided topic to discuss as they drove to Flowers’ office. Coming up with a break up story for Butkis and Garcia was so much easier than dealing with the reality of Peralta and Santiago. Still, she felt bad about the task at hand.  
  
“Do you feel like… a little worried that he’s going to be _disappointed_ in us?” Jake asked.  
  
“Oh my gosh, yes,” Amy sighed. “I’m relieved that he wasn’t involved because I was genuinely starting to like him, but now I’m afraid we’re going to hurt him somehow.”  
  
“That makes no sense,” he laughed, “and I completely agree.”  
  
They walked into the office and found Flowers sitting at the front desk and looking unkempt - something Amy had never thought she would see.  
  
“Mr. Butkis! Ms. Garcia!” Flowers looked slightly cheered to see them, but did not have his usual enthusiasm. “Did we have an appointment?”  
  
“No, no, we didn’t…” Jake began. “But we need to speak with you.”  
  
“Things are a little disorganized at the moment, but I have some time. Please, step into my office,” Flowers said. “Now, what can I do for you?”  
  
“Mr. Flowers,” Amy began, “I’m afraid we have to discontinue services with you. We understand that we are under contract and will pay for everything you have done so far.”  
  
“Has my work been unsatisfactory?” Flowers asked, confusion on his face. “I swear, if you would wait to see the finished product…”  
  
“That’s the thing - there won’t be a finished product, because there won’t be a wedding,” she said.  
  
“We called it off. Things between Amy and I just… weren’t working out,” Jake said, looking at Amy with such convincing hurt she had to look away.  
  
“But why?” Flowers gasped. “I knew something was different, your energy today is so unlike it has been, but one bad day should not undo a whole relationship…”  
  
“Sometimes things just don’t work like you want them to,” Amy said, mortified to find that she was near tears. “It is what it is. So, Mr. Flowers, what do we owe you for your services so far?”  
  
“No charge,” Flowers said. “If this is the decision you have both come to, then you have paid enough already. I am just shocked. I stand by my earlier statements. Rarely have I seen a couple as clearly meant for one another as you two… I am sorry, that is not my place. I wish you both the best.”  
  
They signed some closing paperwork with only occasional instructions from Flowers breaking the silence. Before long, they were back in the car, each breathing sigh of relief over finishing the work with Flowers.  
  
“I really feel bad,” Amy said. “The department is still gonna pay him for his work one everything is done, right?”  
  
“I hope so,” Jake replied. “I’m glad that’s done with, though. I hope he’ll be okay now that he’s losing his nephew’s help with the business.”  
  
“I’m sure he will. It seems like Quincy never took directly from the company, at least,” she smiled weakly.  
  
They drove the rest of the way in silence. She no longer felt the awkwardness from before they visited Flowers, but the sadness that had set in at his office had taken its place. The break up spiel they gave hit a lot closer to their truth than she thought either of them had intended. There was no more pretending, no more what ifs. That chapter was closed.

 

By the time they returned to the precinct, Rosa had gotten her second confession from Quincy’s associate. Jake and Amy agreed to plow through their paperwork and finish everything before going home. The work went by fairly quickly and easily once they got into it, but Amy had never been so thankful to see the end of a stack of papers. At that point, no one was left on the detectives’ floor but the two of them.  
  
“Well, good night, Jake.” She hovered awkwardly by his desk. “Are you sure you don’t need me for anything else?”  
  
“Yeah, it’s good. I’m basically done, anyway.” He stood and stretched. “I’m just gonna look at some other files since I’m here. You know me - can’t stay away from work for too long. Night, Ames.”  
  
“Night,” she replied, moving quickly towards the elevators. 

 

Amy couldn’t wait to get back to her own home with her own bed, and she focused on that anticipation the entire way home.  
  
Unfortunately, instead of the comfort she expected, things just felt weird at home. She had only been gone for a couple of weeks yet everything seemed different now. Sure, the little things were odd after cohabitating so long - only her toiletries in the bathroom, no homemade leftovers in the fridge, no clothes left on the floor. But mostly it was just a sense of loneliness. She had grown used to having Jake around all of the time, even when they weren’t interacting directly. It had quickly become her new normal, and her old normal didn’t sit quite right anymore.  
  
She flopped down onto her bed and sighed. It’s not like she hadn’t anticipated feeling like this, at least somewhat. When she decided to go all in on the undercover relationship, she _knew_ there would be consequences. She just… she honestly just wanted to know what it would be like to be with Jake. She had been tired of fighting and _oh_ had it felt good to give in. To freely wrap her arms around him, to kiss him, to put her guard down (well, mostly) and be a little more vulnerable. But now she knew what she missing, and she cursed herself for giving in to her feelings rather than sticking to her logic.  
  
Over the next two hours, she tried to sleep, but couldn’t seem to shut her brain off. It was strange to sleep alone again; she missed Jake’s presence. She thought about everything that had happened between them - first the obvious recent things, that barrier that they had crossed and had to figure out how to come back from, but then everything else. From partners who could barely stand each other, to friends, to whatever the hell they were now, he had been an unexpected force in her life. She felt better around him, whether it was competition driving their work or just his ability to make her laugh and let go a little bit. And he had _always_ shown her respect when it mattered. From the basic respect of not treating her differently for being a female cop, to accepting and apparently even appreciating her personality quirks, to being honest with her about his feelings last year, to respecting her boundaries when the feelings weren’t reciprocated (as far as he knew, at least).  
  
She was honestly unsure how he felt about her now. He was, of course, still her friend and partner, and she didn’t _think_ he wanted that to change, even now. She had convinced herself prior to all of this that he was over her, that Sophia helped him move on, even if it hadn’t worked out. But there were moments during the last few weeks where it really seemed like he might still care for her that way. Not just the physical moments, because those really could be written off as two sexually frustrated, attractive adults getting carried away (even if that wasn’t true of Amy). It was all of the moments in between. It was so _easy_ to fall into being a couple, for both of them. And he was clearly struggling as much as her with adjusting to leaving the case... But that might just be because it’s weird, not because he still has feelings for her.  
  
If he did, though… what would she do? She had talked herself out of pursuing anything with him time and time again - because she was seeing someone else, because it would change things, because _he_ was seeing someone else, because he was over her. But now? Things were already very different, they were both single, and he might actually not be as “over her” as she thought. Her choice was to let it go and hope things somehow changed back, or take a risk that could go very well or very, very poorly.  
  
“Fuck it,” Amy said, jumping out of bed. She was going to see Jake.


	13. Chapter 13

Amy rushed out the door and almost called Jake to see where he was before realizing that impromptu love confessions were probably better done without a warning call; this whole “acting on impulse” thing was new for her, but she had seen enough romantic comedies to know that much. She would have to find him on her own. It was possible that he was still at the precinct, but his apartment seemed like a safer bet this late at night. She hastily put together a speech in her head as she drove, trying to breathe through the panic that was rising in her. No drafts this time.  
  
She got to Jake’s in record time, hoping the lack of traffic in the middle of the night - oh god, it was the middle of the night, what was she _doing_ \- had more to do with it than her accidentally breaking traffic laws. Her adrenaline almost made her run up the stairs once she arrived, but she thankfully had enough sense to slow down and take the elevator. Taking a deep breath, she tried to prepare herself. If he answered, she would tell him she needed to talk to him, explain her feelings simply and articulately, and if he didn’t feel the same way she would leave calmly. She could do that. Standing in front of his door, she froze for a moment before knocking. God, she hoped he was still awake. A moment later she heard movement from inside, and a very groggy looking Jake opened the door.  
  
“Jake, I -” Amy began, ready to launch into her quickly planned speech.  
  
“Amy?” he asked, a confused grin forming on his face.  
  
With that grin, the first genuine smile she had seen from him since the case suddenly changed, all of Amy’s carefully planned resolve disappeared. She grabbed his shirt and pulled him towards her, kissing him desperately. It lasted only a moment before she realized what she was doing and quickly stepped back.  
  
“Um,” he said, looking dumbfounded.  
  
“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,” She felt utterly mortified at her actions. This was _so_ not the plan. “Jake. I am so sorry, I...”  
  
He blinked at her, apparently unable to form a response, before opening the door to his apartment a little more and waving her inside.  
  
“What just happened?” he asked in a strangled voice.  
  
“Oh _god_ , I'm sorry,” she said again. “I had everything planned, what I was going to say to you... but then I saw you and you smiled and I just didn't even think about it.”  
  
“What were you going to say to me?” He leaned against the wall and rubbed at his temples, which wasn't the most encouraging sign.  
  
“Okay...” she began, taking a breath to steady herself and staring fixedly at her shoes. “Jake, I want something to happen between us. Romantic stylez. For real this time. I've thought about it for a long time, I mean... you know what happened at that dinner with Teddy and Sophia. I meant it then, and it hasn't stopped being true. But you were with Sophia. And then you weren't, but you were so heartbroken over her that I figured you were well over me. So I continued to try and ignore my feelings, and then this damn case happened and it was impossible to ignore anymore. I gave in and knew it would hurt when it ended but I didn't anticipate just how much. I miss being with you, even though we never technically were together, it _felt_ real. And I was going to try to ignore this and go back to normal, but you've always been honest with me and you deserve the same respect from me. So. If you really are over whatever feelings you had for me, I will go back to bottling everything up and I'll figure out how to get past that. But if you're not...”  
  
Determined to meet whatever reaction he had for her, she forced herself to look up from her shoes. She felt like her heart nearly stopped when she saw Jake grinning at her, and she was flooded with relief.  
  
“You liiiiike me,” he teased, still grinning. “ _You_ , Amy Santiago, like _me_. I mean, it does make sense. I’m pretty rad.”  
  
“Shut up,” she laughed. “I need you to be serious for a minute.”  
  
Jake’s grin sobered into a nervous smile.  
  
“Okay, how about this? Amy, I am _seriously_ in love with you. And I really hope I’m not blowing it by being too blunt about that, but it’s been over a year and I _tried_ to get over you and it didn’t work. So!” he said, looking more uncomfortable with every word, “I’m _really_ hoping this isn’t just a booty call, because that would suck _super_ bad.”  
  
“This isn’t just a booty call,” she said, biting her lip in a futile effort at stifling her grin, “Because I’m fairly certain that I’m in love with you too.”  
  
“We’re really doing this?” he asked, cautious hope written on his face.  
  
“I’m in if you are,” she replied.  
  
“Oh, I’m all in,” he said, leaning towards her.  
  
“Great!” Amy said, interrupting the almost kiss. “Now we need to figure out what’s going to happen at work; it’s going to be complicated if we’re dating.”  
  
“Amy-” Jake began.  
  
“I know what forms to fill out, I know what official NYPD policies say,” she continued, ignoring his attempt at getting her attention. “That all should be fine, and of course we can fill it out right away.”  
  
“Amy, we should -” he tried to continue.  
  
“The real problem is going to be how everyone _else_ is going to react, and if you and I can manage to still be partners -” she said until Jake cut her off with a finger placed against her lips.  
  
“ _Santiago_ , we have plenty of time to worry about all of that later. Right now, can I _please_ kiss you instead?” he asked.  
  
She nodded, and soon his lips were on hers and NYPD policies seemed a little less important. Their kisses had become sort of comfortable over the course of the last couple of weeks, but there was a new energy in this one. As much as they had let themselves get into it before, there was still the knowledge that there were limits and it wasn’t quite _real_. Now? There was no need to hold anything back. Jake wrapped his arms around her waist, pulling her in as if he couldn’t get close enough - a problem Amy was experiencing herself. She stood on her toes to meet his lips more efficiently, and the next thing she knew he was lifting her. Taking his cue, she wrapped her legs around him as he carried her towards the couch.  
  
He attempted to sit down without letting go of her, which resulted in them falling onto the couch more than sitting on it. Fortunately, falling on each other hardly served as an interruption. As his lips began working down the length of her neck and his hands cupped her ass, she felt a slight thrill at breaking their undercover rules (though she would never admit it to Jake). Soon, she was straddling his lap and they were each busy removing the other’s shirt. She pulled away as he began reaching for her bra.  
  
“Hold on a sec,” Amy said, trying to catch her breath.  
  
“Is everything okay?” Jake replied, a combination of lust and concern on his face. “Is this too much right now?”  
  
“Oh my gosh, no, I am fine, this is fine,” she laughed. “I just… thought we should probably go ahead and get a condom out of my purse now, save us the trouble later. I mean, I’m on the pill, but they recommend using two methods of birth control.”  
  
“Very thorough.” He smirked. “You said earlier that this wasn’t _just_ a booty call. But it was totally _part_ booty call, wasn’t it?”  
  
“It was just one of the possible outcomes,” she blushed, somehow embarrassed despite the fact that she had her legs wrapped around him at that very moment. “I like to be prepared.”  
  
“And that is one reason why I love you,” he grinned at her. “Now why don’t you grab one of those bad boys, and let’s head to the bedroom.”  
  
“Sounds good to me,” she replied, returning his grin and enjoying the butterflies she felt upon hearing ‘I love you’.

  


 

Amy woke the next morning to the now familiar feeling of Jake’s body pressed against hers. Upon opening her eyes, though, she was greeted by the unfamiliar: not the bedroom of the undercover house, but a bedroom that looked vaguely like a bomb had gone off. She was in _Jake’s bed_ in _Jake’s apartment_ , and without any kind of pretense. What happened last night was _very_ real. She snuggled closer to him, and he wrapped his arm around her waist.  
  
“Mornin’,” he said, and she could feel his smile as he placed a kiss on her hair.  
  
She turned around to face him.  
  
“Good morning,” she replied, grinning so hard that her face hurt.  
  
“I kind of can’t believe I’m waking up next to you,” he said. “Which is weird, because we’ve now woken up next to each other… at least 14 times?”  
  
“Context makes a difference,” she smirked, “but I do get what you mean.”  
  
“So, we’ve got what, three days off? How would you like to spend it?” he asked.  
  
“I’ve got some ideas…” she began, giving him a quick kiss before turning around and getting out of the bed. “Starting with planning. In three days, we will see our coworkers, and we _need_ to be prepared to handle all possible scenarios.”  
  
“Come on, Ames, three days is _plenty_ of time,” he whined. “Time that could be better spent doing other things. Like sex.”  
  
“Well that can happen too, but do you really think you’re going to talk me out of planning twice in a row?” she asked, eyebrow raised.  
  
“Fair point,” he laughed.  
  
“Now where do you keep your graphing paper?” she asked, looking nervously at the drawers near his room.  
  
“I don’t even know what that is,” he said.  
  
“I’ve got some in my desk at work,” she said, rolling her eyes. “That’s closer than my apartment, so I’ll go grab it real quick.”  
  
She began scanning the room for her clothes from last night. Thankfully, she thought to change into something else before coming over last night - coming into work in yesterday’s clothes or pajamas would not exactly make things easier.  
  
“I’m going to head in with you,” Jake said, picking up a shirt from what Amy hoped was a clean pile of clothes. “I got a text from Charles that I apparently forgot to sign like… all of my paperwork I did yesterday.”  
  
“Jake, you can’t be serious. We can’t go in there _together_ ,” she sighed with exasperation. “ _We don’t have a plan yet_.”  
  
“If anyone says something, we’ll just tell them we went and got coffee or something to talk more about the case. No one is going to doubt us being workaholics,” he replied.  
  
“Okay…” she said hesitantly. “That _would_ make sense.”  
  
“It’s a good PLAN,” he said triumphantly, high-fiving her on his way out to the living room.

  


 

Coffee in hand, they arrived at the precinct and were greeted by Gina as soon as they reached their desks.  
  
“ _Oh my god_ ,” she stage whispered as she approached them, “you two totally _did_ get some since last time I saw you.”  
  
“Gina!” Amy gasped, looking around and hoping no one noticed the comment.  
  
“Gina, so nice to see you, let’s go talk,” Jake said in a slight panic, guiding Gina by her elbow towards the evidence lock up as Amy followed behind.  
  
“You dirty dogs,” she smirked.  
  
“How on earth did you know?!” Amy asked, not bothering to feign ignorance.  
  
“Duh, I’m like the expert on secret workplace romances, and I’ve known Jake my whole life. It’s obvious,” Gina said.  
  
“That’s true, she can read me like a book,” Jake added. “Gina, please don’t tell anyone. We’re not exactly sure what’s happening yet… “  
  
“Puh-lease. I love drama but I’m not a stone cold bitch. You’re my friend, Jake. Amy, you’re okay,” she smiled at them and turned to walk away.  
  
“Thanks?” Amy said, unsure if she should feel validated or slighted.  
  
“Oh, and Jake, I’m also not an idiot. Guess who’s got a chit now, buddy!” she added as she paused at the doorway. “Now go be your narsty selves.”  
  
“That went…” Jake began. “Well? I guess?”

  


 

As they sat back at their desks, Jake finishing his signatures and Amy waiting on him, Rosa approached them.  
  
“Flowers is here, sitting in interrogation. His story checks out so far and he’s given us a lot more to help us nail his douchebag nephew,” she said.  
  
“That’s great! But, wait, do we need to leave so he doesn’t see us?” Amy asked, a slight sense of panic rising in her.  
  
“Nah,” Rosa replied as she walked away. “He already found out who you two were, he noticed your first names on the desks when he walked by I guess and put two and two together. Smart dude. But I’m not too stressed about it, we probably wouldn’t get much more use out of you guys being undercover anyway.”  
  
Just then, Flowers left the interrogation room and immediately zeroed in on them.  
  
“Mr. Butkis, Ms. Garcia, hello,” he said with a smirk. “I suppose it is time we are properly introduced.”  
  
“Hi Mr. Flowers,”Amy replied, giving him a sheepish smile. “I’m detective Amy Santiago, and this is my _partner_ detective Jake Peralta.”  
  
“I must say, I am relieved to know that you have not broken up,” he said. “My intuition said that the two of you were something special, and it is never wrong.”  
  
“But we weren’t even a couple to be _able_ to break up,” she said.  
  
“Maybe not technically, but a very good team at least. And you are either the best actors I have ever seen, or there was something more there, for you were a _very_ convincing couple,” he said, smiling at them knowingly. “Forgive me if I am overstepping my boundaries, though. I wish you all the best, and if you are ever in need of wedding services, please do let me know! I would be happy to work with the two of you again. Farewell.”  
  
He shook their hands before departing, and the detectives watched as he walked away.  
  
“He’s _good_ ,” Jake said.  
  
“He saw through us better than _we_ saw through us,” Amy said.  
  
“Well, let’s get going before someone else in this room full of detectives does the same,” he said.  
  
“I told you it was a bad idea to come here before we had a plan,” she teased, holding up her graph paper.  
  
“What can I say? Amy, you’re the best,” he laughed.  
  
“Amy-you’re-the-best, title of our sex tape!” she stood up and blurted triumphantly. “HAH!”  
  
“Did you just say ‘title of _our_ sex tape’?” asked Rosa, smirking at them.  
  
“It’s about damn time,” Terry said, shaking his head.  
  
“You still owe me a chit,” Gina sang without looking up from her phone.  
  
“I _KNEW_ IT!” shouted Charles, fist pumping the air. “This is the happiest day of my life.”  
  
“Oops?” Amy said, before she and Jake burst into laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for sticking with what accidentally became kind of a beast of a fic. As always, feel free to fangirl with me over at amaliabalash.tumblr.com! :)


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